Tom, Aren't you glad you didn't buy that gloriamaris!! I paid $75.00 apiece for my first two Cypraea teulerei, 30 years ago. Now you can get a nice one for $10.00. You are right about shells not being a good investment (financially speaking). They almost always decrease in value over time. A few species may be on the brink of extinction, particularly terrestrial species; but usually if a marine species is still living, then somewhere there has to be a population dense enough to ensure that individuals can find mates. The "loners" that are collected over a widespread area usually just represent individuals that were carried away from the breeding area as floating larvae. Conus gloriamaris was being collected at the rate of one or two specimens per year, until a couple of guys went to a small unpopulated island in the Philippines and collected 80 of them in one afternoon, and the price dropped accordingly. Today, many areas are known where that species can be collected, and the shell, while still uncommon, is not a great rarity. There may be a locality where Conus cervus is equally common. If so, eventually someone will find it, and the price will drop. As you noted, some values do increase over time, but usually not as fast as inflation, therefore the net effect is a decrease in value. There is an old story, I'm not sure how true, about Epitonium scalare. As the story goes, some European emperor owned the only known specimen. When a second specimen became available, the emperor paid a fabulous price at auction for the shell, then put it on the floor and stomped on it, thereby ensuring that his first specimen remained the one and only. Hopefully most of us approach our collections with a bit more reserve than that. Paul M. Providence, Rhode Island, USA