These 8-1/4 inch cowries exist. I have some. They are masterly wooden darved
shells. Made in Cebu. From some distance they look real. Very well made.
Roger Van den Berghe
 
 
At 10:32 AM 2/20/99 -0500, you wrote:
>To other cowry enthusiasts on the CONCH-L server,
>
>I knew that I would reach this issue of the HAWAIIAN SHELL NEWS
>eventually. The Dec. 1990 issue has an item under RECENT FINDS
>with a photo of a person holding an object purported to be a
>Cypraea tigris of 8-1/4 inches in length.
>
>It doesn't take much to realize that, with an established world record
>of barely over six inches out of millions of collected tiger cowries,
>this was a hoax. Imagine, those of you with an understanding of
>Gaussian distributions, where this "specimen" would fall on such
>curve.
>
>It is being included only as a matter of completeness in the
>cowry-related items... and as a warning to others, again, that
>things too-good-to-be-true usually aren't true.
>
>
>Aloha,
>
>makuabob (a.k.a. Bob Dayle)
>