I had intended to take photos at Bob's on Saturday morning, but after taking just two photos, my camera's one GB SD memory card was full. Bummer. The two photos were not of the distribution of the sets, either, but rather, were of Bob's Imperial Austrian collection. BTW, there were eight adults and two children at our little get together. I wound up spending six hours there, including lunch.
Bob had just purchased a Greewood & Ball collection and is in the process of buying a 90 figure Ping collection. They are way too rich for my blood at $125 to $150 a figure. He also has ten rare Dresden, large-scale porcelin Napoleonic cavalry mounted figures which were selling in antique stores in Europe for an amazing $16,000 each! These are undoubtably the most expensive pieces in his collection. Unfortunately, four of these figures were damaged in the earthquake we had here several years ago. Bob is a stuborn man; I keep trying to convince him to have them repaired by one of the specialists utilized by insurance companies, especially the high-end ones who repair valuable pieces for museums. But to no avail.
At the end of the day, after everyone left, I gave him an early (April 26th) 70th birthday present. It was a 25 figure set of 30mm Josef Kober Austrian Army figures. Actually, I also brought, as a backup, a two box flag set of the Edmund's Confederate States of America Cherokee Brigade in case he didn't like the Kober figures. Trying to find something that a collector with a 20,000 figure collection might like can be a little challenging at times. But he was delighted with the Kober figures and called them charming.
