Rock on, Ellen! I, too, love the moment when something new or special shows up literally at my feet. Those are the real treasures. I have mainly self-collected shells in my small collection. In the past, I bought a few that I'd wanted forever, it seemed. But now I just enjoy the collecting and identifying. And some of the most remarkable items are damaged shells which reveal more about the animal than it's intact shell does.


---- Ellen Bulger <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

=============
Tom,

Once upon a time there might have been rich shell dealers, long long ago?
I'm thinking of the days when shells were all the rage and people had shell
rooms. I'm thinking of the trading company that became Shell Oil.  But even
then it must have been a niche market. It was a fad, like tulips, like
Beanie Babies!

I feel for all the shell dealers who have to pack and lug that stuff. Could
be worse. At craft shows the textile people don't have to worry about
breakage and the jewelers have tiny wares. Furniture is big and heavy. But
the glass blowers and the potters have it the worst!

I don't quite get the rare shell thing, I never have. From an artist's
angle, the most common shell can be stunning, a worn shell can be
fantastic, a broken worn shell compelling. And from a biologist's POV, they
all rock.

I do so love the quest to find them though. I goddamn love that moment when
you are walking along a beach, or snorkeling over a turtle grass bed, or
turning over a rock as the waves roll over and you look in the sand and you
can't believe your eyes. That's the best part, not the shell itself. The
moment when your heart stops! That buzz is glorious.


On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Tom Eichhorst <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>  The online auctions have come as close as anything to what you are
> proposing, but the issue is a bit more complex than it seems when we all
> wish that purty shell was cheaper.  I for one do not have a problem with
> paying a dealer's price.  I am paying for someone who made the contacts or
> traveled to the area; collected, bought, or whatever the shells; sorted
> them and dumped the junk; cleaned them and took the trouble to match up
> opercs when required; identified them or made the attempt; made up lists
> and or traveled to shows lugging all of that calcium; and then laid it out
> on a table for my inspection (or an Internet list).  If the price is too
> steep I can move along.  As an investment, shells fall way below almost
> anything.  A few years ago *Cypraea dani* (named in 2002) sold on
> Internet auction sites for $50 plus (lots of plus).  Cypraea collector
> friends bemoaned the steep price, but our avocation is truly one of supply
> and demand.  That shell today is certainly available for $5.  I know a
> couple rich bankers and I know their life style; I do not know any rich
> shell dealers.  I pulled together thousands of shells while writing the
> nerite book, and it would not have been possible without dealers willing to
> go out of their way to gather up shells that do not bring fantastic
> prices.  I have also benefited from old collections sold to dealers -
> always with the old labels included.  It always sounds good to cut out the
> "middle man," but before you do, it might pay to take a quick look at the
> value added by that person and that job.
>
> Tom Eichhorst in New Mexico, USA
>
> On 3/30/2014 4:06 PM, John Varner wrote:
>
> this thread has headed off in a curatorial vein, which is OK, but I was
> originally wondering aloud if there might not be a way to unite suppliers
> like the "sea women" with buyers, (specimen collectors) more efficiently
> via the web.  I'm guessing that the Sea Women would be flabbergasted to
> learn that a single nice T. cornutus could fetch $50 - probably as much or
> more than they make off a day's diving for the fish monger.  Likewise with
> African villagers who gather and sell 6" Achatinas by the basket full for
> pennies, etc., etc.  There is a growing "Fair Trade" movement to lessen the
> cut of middlemen for commodities like coffee beans and cocao by seeing that
> the actual small-time producers get a higher percentage of the finished
> value of the product.  As the web has expanded into even remote areas, such
> a scheme - fair trade shells - seems do-able.
> Back in the 1960's, as a kid with my name in the AMU annual bulletin, I
> was written to by a leper colony in the Philippines.  They were soliciting
> me to see if I would like to buy shells, as this was a revenue source for
> the colony.  It was almost heart-wrenching.  As a kid, I was not in the
> market.  But I often wonder how those people could have benefited from
> being able to directly sell on an internet auction site, had the web been
> around and they could take advantage of it.
>
> - John
>
>  ------------------------------
> Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 21:40:33 +0000
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CONCH-L] price does not equate to rarity
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> At the Academy, we often receive the donation of a collection,and from our
> point of view "the more labels, the better". They can make a big difference
> in the long run. For example: just last week we were looking at some
> Terebra types in the collection. They were from Detlev Thaanum, but had
> been collected by D. B. Kuhns and D. B. Langford - who turn out to be the
> same person. He changed his name in 1914. This was important, as the name
> Thaanum used was Kuhns, but our cataloger (and Pilsbry, in describing the
> species) used Langford, thus helping us determine when and in what order
> things were done. Thaanum's original labels were still present (in his
> distinctive handwriting), so we knew what we were looking at.
> Most of the lots in the Paul Hesse collection came with his neat labels,
> but also their earlier ones. This has helped us identify types from several
> authors, who sold or exchanged specimens with Hesse, going back to the
> 1860s - Rolle, Monterosato and Pfeiffer, to name but three.
> In a collection we recently received, the owner had typed the contents of
> each original label onto one of his own, then thrown the former away.
> Sadly, over decades he had forgotten from whom he had purchased the various
> lots (several thousand), and we thus lost a link to the original
> collectors.
> So, from a museum collection manager: NEVER discard a label, please, and
> number all the labels (and the shells too) so that when (not if, when) you
> drop a drawer, you can reunite everything correctly.
>
>  *Paul Callomon*
> *Collection Manager, Malacology, Invertebrate Paleontology and General
> Invertebrates*
> ------------------------------
> *Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia*
> *[log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> Tel 215-405-5096 <215-405-5096> -
> Fax 215-299-1170 <215-299-1170>*
>
>
>
>
>
>

----------------------------------------------------------------------
[log in to unmask] - a forum for informal discussions on molluscs
To leave this list, click on the following web link:
http://listserv.uga.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=conch-l&A=1
Type your email address and name in the appropriate box and
click leave the list.
----------------------------------------------------------------------