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The advice about both newspapers auctions and company records of sale sounds pretty smart.

Do you have any pics at all of the models? Would make them much easier to find if they were sold and ended up in the community somehow.

niv-mizzet wrote:
10000?! D:

I have one of the biggest collections out of our group, with about 15,000 points of blood Angels, and that's ONLY like 350 models. And that takes up my armoire, a few carry cases, and a reaver Titan sitting on the "undeployed/reserves" table in my game room.

I can't begin to imagine 10,000 models.

Did you outsource to a Chinese child labor factory to get them painted?

In all seriousness, good luck.

I used to be one of the best miniature painters in the US and England in the late-70's and early-80's.

I painted miniatures for display work for Heritage, Ral Partha, Citadel (where. I had models on display at Dalling Road for over a decade from 1984+: The Thrudd the Barbarian collection, and several Beastmen - although they were still Runequest Broo at that time - and Chaos Warriors), Steve Jackson Games, Martian Metals, and a couple of other manufacturers I cannot recall.

Due to my wife, the only samples of my work that still exist are on the box-art for a few of SJ Games OGRE miniatures (the Fencer - which I painted in about 20 minutes sitting at Steve's booth in 1992 at Origins, the trucks, the Combine GEVs, and either the light tanks or GEVs... Can't recall).

Roughly half of my collection wasn't painted (mostly Essex, Archive, and Dragon's Tooth Miniatures Armies - Those Dragon's Tooth. Lizard men would bring a freaking fortune on eBay).

But I got most of them by being allowed to just take what I wanted from manufacturers. I came home from school in London in 1984 with a little over a ton of lead from Citadel (not as many miniatures as you would think, especially when 10 of them were Imperial Dragons). This was before Airlines bothered with weighing your luggage, and just limited you to "2 Items." I did pay extra for two additional "Items" of luggage. They were steamer trucks filled with miniatures (4 in total).

And, given the level of paint jobs on most of the painted miniatures, I doubt seriously anyone would strip them.

To date... I have located precisely ONE miniature. A Ral Partha Genie. It was on eBay in 2006. It had been re-based, but the paint job was intact, with a few touch-ups to dings and nicks.

I don't have much hope of finding them.

I imagine one day I will be at a convention and will see one, or an army.... But.... Not much hope.

MB


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 JimOnMars wrote:
Why now?

I have asked on other miniature forums.

But. I just learned about DakkaDakka a few months ago...

And due to the accident that caused my wife to have the opportunity to steal them (she sold them for drugs), I was busy learning how to walk again for a couple of years after that... Which took up a bit of time.


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 Sammoth wrote:
Really, it's 2015 and you worry about it NOW ? It was 16 years ago. You're a bit past the Statute of Limitations. I would just chalk it up as a loss and move on.

I mentioned in another reply that there were issues, and that this isn't the first time I have inquired about it (in other venues).




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 mechanicalhorizon wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:
The Master Molds for the early-80's Citadel Imperial Dragon MB

Out of curiosity, how did you get your hands on that?

I imagine it involved Tom Cruise crawling through air vents and repelling out of a ceiling vent.

I owned the rights to the. Citadel Imperial Dragon.

Bought them (it) from Bryan Ansell in 1984.

It was produced for a while by the company that eventually became Reaper.


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 triplegrim wrote:
Such a big collection as that might have been bought as a single auction by an avid collector for instance. Its not beyond hope that he might get a clue here, especially with so many rare pieces in it.

I think asking your ex what she did with it might be the best place to start, you never know when its just been stored in the attic.

And, just to reiterate:

Sold it for $200 worth of Crack (The collection of Miniatures was not all that was included. Also in the collection was a library worth about $150,000. It included one of eight copies of Daniel Webster's 16th or 17th Century Manuscript on Hunting Witches. That hasn't turned up either).

As I said... She stole EVERYTHING (she even stole my underwear and socks that I wasn't wearing, and didn't have in the hospital).

MB


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 Sammoth wrote:

angryboy2k wrote:

 Sammoth wrote:
Really, it's 2015 and you worry about it NOW ? It was 16 years ago. You're a bit past the Statute of Limitations. I would just chalk it up as a loss and move on.

Good for you.

The OP has decided to throw out a few lines of inquiry to see if he can dredge anything up. It doesn't cost him much to ask, and after all these years he obviously has reached a stage in his life where he thinks back on these things, finds he still wishes he could get them back and is making the attempt. I don't understand why anyone would think this is the place to give him advice in moving on. I'm quite sure that he had enough "moving on" when his marriage collapsed "in the worst possible" way and he's now through with moving on.

I by no means am talking about his past marriage. . I am talking about the timeframe to throw a question out there like this. I understand he is grasping for some answer. Let be real it's not a few years we are talking about 16 years ago. I just stated the truth like many others here have. Besides you would think the first person to ask would be his ex. Not some random strangers. That would be were I would start.

She was killed shortly after the last time I spoke to her, when I did verify that she sold them to some random person for $200 (so she could buy crack, since dancing around that issue will just waste time.... Which is what caused our separation to begin with. I had seen what cocaine does to people in the 1980's, and I gave her six months to quit, and instead she used that time to try to kill me).

But that information didn't lead very far, and at the time, people didn't know about eBay for selling miniatures like they do now.

And... For many years I was not able to do much at all, let alone walk. I still have wounds that don't heal because of injuries associated with that time.

MB


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 master of ordinance wrote:
Good luck OP, losing that many rare mini's must have been traumatic. The hopes are very slim, but I will keep my eyes open for them.

Also, as thechosen said, why didnt you press charges?

Did... Wound up as a suspect in her disappearance (at the time, she was just "missing." It would be almost half a decade before we found out she had been killed).

MB


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 oni wrote:
If you believe they were sold as part of a storage locker sale - likely an auction. Go to the storage locker facility and see if they have records of sale dating back to that year or if the facility hired an independent agent, try and find out who and seek out a record of sale from them. If records of sale are available, contact the purchaser.

I could try this again. The storage facility would not give up the records without a warrant, and due to extenuating circumstances, the police were less than helpful in tracking things down once my wife went missing.


MB


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 Medium of Death wrote:
Can we assume you murdered your ex-wife and that's why it has taken so long for you to get on the trail?

Sigh....

If I knew where her body was, I would go dig it up, raise her from the dead in some unholy rite, and then kill her again.

But she died shortly after stealing everything.

And, read above for what "took me so long."

MB


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 PrehistoricUFO wrote:
Did you happen to have a collection of vintage Dwarves?

Pre-slottas.

Yes... An entire army of them. Both the Norse Dwarves, and the "Regular" dwarves that came out at the same time as the pre-slot a Bob Olley Goblins and Orcs that are also so rare these days (they suffered from lead rot pretty badly, as I remember that a lot of my Bob Olley Orcs had that happen to them, and I thought an extraterrestrial alien fungus had chosen me as a vector to infect the planet and take over the world, and that I was going to start sprouting tentacles at any second like in John Carpenter's The Thing.

Only about three units worth were painted, though (Norse Dwarves, I think). I can' true all how they were based, though, because I remember. I was planning on re-basing all of my armies to DBx standards in the early 1990's, in a revolt against Warhammer.

Those dwarves are perhaps the BEST Dwarves that have ever been done. If Tom Meier would do some dwarves now, they might be better.

But in my opinion, no one else has come close to the Dwarfy-ness of those Dwerrow.

MB

It's still a very long shot. But the Citadel Collectors Yahoo group is a good bet, they know a lot about who owns what in the community when it comes to unusual stuff. When it comes to very rare items, the community is fairly small.

This thread makes for a interesting read!

I've known addictions in marriage, and it's not pretty. Mine didn't end anywhere nearly as badly as yours, and that's a hell of a time you had.

The only ways I can think of to track down your stuff would be to ask other sculptors (which you have), collectors (see above), and the previous 'owners'.
A detective might be able to wangle something out of the police to get the storage sales info.

Otherwise, I expect it to have been melted down and sold by weight :(
Being able to prove prior ownership might help if you went to a pro. Employment history and the box lids might be enough.
Links to the models in question too, from sites such as http://www.solegends.com/

I may have seen them, even though I'm in the UK. By any chance were some of these just primed?


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Did they look like this model?

Added spoiler tags to large image which was causing the thread to scroll sideways - RiTides

@Beafraid, thank you for sharing your story, you didn't have to. I really I feel for you.

Have you also asked at the Miniatures Page, Stuff of Legends and the Collecting Citiadel Miniatures wiki?

The forums and or webmasters might be able to keep an eye out.

Thank you for sharing your sad story. However, the only advice I could offer is try the Storage Auction records and start from there. However it might be a lost cause without a paper trail.

BeAfraid wrote:
I used to be one of the best miniature painters in the US and England in the late-70's and early-80's.

Surely you must have pictures in that case (I saw you say that there are almost no samples of your work but... come on, you've got to have a few pictures). You even mentioned seeing an auction in 2006, that must have a picture. Without some sort of pictures your request is going to be basically impossible... and seemingly, finding pictures should be easier than finding the miniatures themselves, at least for starters.

Hey dude. Best of luck with your endeavour. I don't have anything to add with regard to finding your miniatures. I imagine you've done a lot of investigating already, and if they were sold as a large amount, one would imagine word would get around. I'm really rooting for you.

Have you done any modeling or painting work since? I'd love to see your more current work.

Da Stormlord wrote:
I may have seen them, even though I'm in the UK. By any chance were some of these just primed?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spoiler:

Did they look like this model?

Added spoiler tags to large image which was causing the thread to scroll sideways - RiTides

All of the Space Marines were either 1983/84 Metal, or Original Plastics (beaky Marines, I hear they are called).

And all of my Space Marines were painted, with the Man-In-The-Moon chapter insignia (pity things went so sideways, they might have become an official chapter).

I wish that I could remember which armies were completely painted, and which were not. I have tried going through everything step by step, but inevitably I will forget something along the way.

But I do know that my Space Marines were all painted, because I had exactly 280 of the Marines, and then Dreadnaughts for each platoon of 20 Marines (this was before the days of official lists), and a platoon of scouts for each company (these were four jet-bikes, and one speeder per platoon. I think I had it grouped into four companies of three platoons each, plus a command group and a weapons section. Two Dreadnaughts per platoon. They were the original Dreadnaughts.

But given what was in the collection, it could have been spread all over creation.


MB


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 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
@Beafraid, thank you for sharing your story, you didn't have to. I really I feel for you.

Have you also asked at the Miniatures Page, Stuff of Legends and the Collecting Citiadel Miniatures wiki?

The forums and or webmasters might be able to keep an eye out.

I first asked on TMP back in 2003, but I no longer get along very well with the owner of TMP over the fact he tends to be rather tyrannical and hypocritical on some issues and his management of the boards.

I did ask The Stuff of Legends owner, but he had not seen anything come up.

And I had not heard of the Collecting Citadel Miniatures Wiki. That might help produce some leads.


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 RiTides wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:
I used to be one of the best miniature painters in the US and England in the late-70's and early-80's.

Surely you must have pictures in that case (I saw you say that there are almost no samples of your work but... come on, you've got to have a few pictures). You even mentioned seeing an auction in 2006, that must have a picture. Without some sort of pictures your request is going to be basically impossible... and seemingly, finding pictures should be easier than finding the miniatures themselves, at least for starters.

I will see if I can track down the auction image.

The only problem is that the base was altered, and the bases are the most distinctive way to identify them. The style of the paint jobs are pretty distinctive as well, as I was pretty good then.

But The only photos of them that I owned were in the storage unit with the miniatures.

And the Box Art for the OGRE minis aren't good samples for most of the miniatures, considering I did those paint jobs in such a rush (and they are very different from the typical paint jobs I did on vehicles, which doesn't help at all for the armies and character figures).

MB

@BeAfraid

Do you mind if I ask what you intend to do when you find them? Are you wanting to buy them back, just find out where they went, or something else?

 RiTides wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:
I used to be one of the best miniature painters in the US and England in the late-70's and early-80's.

Surely you must have pictures in that case (I saw you say that there are almost no samples of your work but... come on, you've got to have a few pictures). You even mentioned seeing an auction in 2006, that must have a picture. Without some sort of pictures your request is going to be basically impossible... and seemingly, finding pictures should be easier than finding the miniatures themselves, at least for starters.

Don't forget this happened in 1999. Digital photography and 'the cloud' were just taking off, I think I got my first digital camera around 2003. So you'd be talking about physical photos that were probably lost with the rest of the collection.

That being said if there are any old magazines you know your work was in someone here could probably send you pics.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
One other thought, your best bet for mobilizing the community might be to get your story into print in a magazine or newspaper as well as online.

Work with a journalist to really tell the story the highs and lows and persuade people to care.

And make sure it's available online for lots of sharing and online plugging.

You also mentioned your library, so this story might be of more general interest than just the small and insular wargaming community.


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Da Stormlord wrote:
I may have seen them, even though I'm in the UK. By any chance were some of these just primed?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spoiler:

Did they look like this model?

Added spoiler tags to large image which was causing the thread to scroll sideways - RiTides

If this is a joke it's in really bad taste.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 RiTides wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:
I used to be one of the best miniature painters in the US and England in the late-70's and early-80's.

Surely you must have pictures in that case (I saw you say that there are almost no samples of your work but... come on, you've got to have a few pictures). You even mentioned seeing an auction in 2006, that must have a picture. Without some sort of pictures your request is going to be basically impossible... and seemingly, finding pictures should be easier than finding the miniatures themselves, at least for starters.

Don't forget this happened in 1999. Digital photography and 'the cloud' were just taking off, I think I got my first digital camera around 2003. So you'd be talking about physical photos that were probably lost with the rest of the collection.

That being said if there are any old magazines you know your work was in someone here could probably send you pics.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
One other thought, your best bet for mobilizing the community might be to get your story into print in a magazine or newspaper as well as online.

Work with a journalist to really tell the story the highs and lows and persuade people to care.

And make sure it's available online for lots of sharing and online plugging.

You also mentioned your library, so this story might be of more general interest than just the small and insular wargaming community.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Da Stormlord wrote:
I may have seen them, even though I'm in the UK. By any chance were some of these just primed?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spoiler:

Did they look like this model?

Added spoiler tags to large image which was causing the thread to scroll sideways - RiTides

If this is a joke it's in really bad taste.

Not a joke, I've just not seen much old 40k stuff. I have a whole collection of old space marines and never used them, planning to list them on ebay.

We need to read the thread as what it is.

The OP is looking back at his collection, missing it and posted here in order to make himself feel he is doing something.

In general the mission here is to generate some sympathy, and as most gamers have had something stolen at some time, for me it was my Battletech novels and my dice, plus the occassional missing crap from eBay. We know it can get irritating when we reminisce.

With exception of a few dicks the replies here have shown sympathy, and so do I.

The only actual recourse the OP has is to track the Storage Unit sale to see who bought it. You maybe he could then trace who it was sold to and make enquiries there.

I'm going to make a wild guess here, but if they were sold as part of a Storage Unit Auction, they probably weren't sold for melt. Unless the guy buying the stuff was a complete amateur, he'd see thousands of carefully painted and packaged figures, and assume it's a collection. 1999 was a while ago, but it was well into the time when people went to estate sales/flea markets/storage auctions looking to cash in on collectibles.

It's not that hard to figure out to ask at the comic/gaming/collectibles shops and finding somebody that would buy them. There were, and still are, guys that just love having piles of lead.

Were I a betting man, I'm guessing this entire collection is sitting in some gamers house. The only real way to back track to it would be to follow in the footsteps of the Auction Buyer in 1999 - find the people that worked/owned those stores, see if anybody remembers a person buying or selling a massive lot of miniatures. Keep in mind, the sale was likely legal, and they won't have to divulge information.

Even worse, even if you find that they're in the hands of a private owner, there's no real way to recover. The length of time since the sale and their nature as marital property would make legal recovery difficult.

Still, I feel very bad for the OP. I didn't lose a collection of nearly the length, nor have a marriage end, but I've lost minis in a break up. I still sometimes wonder where the Juan Diaz daemonettes are....

To our fallen miniature brothers

 Orlanth wrote:

In general the mission here is to generate some sympathy, and as most gamers have had something stolen at some time, for me it was my Battletech novels and my dice, plus the occassional missing crap from eBay.

My MTG Rare binder (no power 9 but a bunch of expensive ones and duel lands)

 Ratius wrote:
To our fallen miniature brothers

Pouring out a 40 of Lantham Medium.

hahaha PJ

 Orlanth wrote:

In general the mission here is to generate some sympathy, and as most gamers have had something stolen at some time, for me it was my Battletech novels and my dice, plus the occassional missing crap from eBay.

For BeAfraid's massive collection, my Pokémon binder, and everyone else who's had something stolen...

 Sinful Hero wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

In general the mission here is to generate some sympathy, and as most gamers have had something stolen at some time, for me it was my Battletech novels and my dice, plus the occassional missing crap from eBay.

For BeAfraid's massive collection, my Pokémon binder, and everyone else who's had something stolen...

Lol

I've not actually had anything stolen

Hey,
I'm sorry you've lost all those minis. Losing 10000 minis is hard to deal with (even though I've never had that happen before).
Your chance of retreiving your minis is near zero, if not at zero. You said your wife sold them to some random guy so she could buy crack. Those minis are long gone. I estimate that the chance of ever retreiving them is 0.00000000000000000000000047%. (yes, that is an uneducated guess).
Perhaps if you had tried to find that guy who your wife sold them to earier-and I mean at least 16 years earlier-like just arfter you lost them-you would hvae had at least a 45% chance of retreiving them (yes, that is also an uneducated guess).
Most likely, you will never get them back. But either way, happy hunting! PM me if neccesarry.

I understand what it's like to get nostalgic. I all to often find myself thinking about the MTG cards I owned and wonder where they're at now. I had the power 9, four of every dual land, the list goes on and on... so many cards that now sell for hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars that I had bought in $3.00 booster packs, traded for or purchased for only a few dollars (a fraction of what they sell for now). It's tough thinking about it at times - I too wish I could reclaim things lost. I can sympathize with OP.

Ah jeez. OP, man, I know I'm clogging up the thread with this, but I hope you get somewhere with this. Massive sympathy for you here.

 Orlanth wrote:
We need to read the thread as what it is.

The OP is looking back at his collection, missing it and posted here in order to make himself feel he is doing something.

In general the mission here is to generate some sympathy, and as most gamers have had something stolen at some time, for me it was my Battletech novels and my dice, plus the occassional missing crap from eBay. We know it can get irritating when we reminisce.

With exception of a few dicks the replies here have shown sympathy, and so do I.

The only actual recourse the OP has is to track the Storage Unit sale to see who bought it. You maybe he could then trace who it was sold to and make enquiries there.

I have already tried that, and I need to get a warrant or court order to get them to surrender the information of who usually buys from them (There is a cop in SF, or who was in San Francisco, who I was friends with who told me that the storage company is under investigation for some shady practices, and they are playing really close to the vest).

As for "generating sympathy."

No... Not really... I am hoping to eventually generate some leads which might help track down even ONE miniature.

And the thread has proved useful in providing some ideas for avenues that either did not get fully explore, or which are completely new.

If I eventually discover that my miniatures are in the hands of a gamer who has been taking care of them, or using them to game with, then I will be very happy, even if I never have them returned.

My biggest fear is to discover they have been destroyed, because it would mean the destruction of many one of a kind and/or very rare miniatures.

But I can do without sympathy. I am too old, jaded, and cynical for it at this point.

MB


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 Sinful Hero wrote:
@BeAfraid

Do you mind if I ask what you intend to do when you find them? Are you wanting to buy them back, just find out where they went, or something else?

Very good question!!!

Pretty much the exact same thing that one might expect with a beloved pet that went missing.

If it was in a good home, with an owner that was loving, and provided a decent life for the pet, then one might well leave things as they are.

The same with my miniatures.

For those that wound up in a decent home, where the owner appreciated and kept care of them (as well as using them), then I would be satisfied with just knowing what became of them.

There are a few pieces and armies which I might seek a way to recover: The Slann, the 1983 Citadel Orcs, Goblins, Dwarves, Giants, and Skeletons. Much of my 6mm Sci-Fi stuff. And the Archive Conversions I created in 1980 that never saw production (Hobgoblin and Goblin conversions to produce figures for an entire army)... And I would seek recovery of the Master Molds for the Citadel Imperial Dragon, and the other molds for lines I own the rights to (although we may have the means to re-create the molds for some of these from existing stock that survived at Reaper from when it used to be Genesis Gaming Products).

But.... Ultimately, I just want to find out that the miniatures were not destroyed, or did not become part of a landfill.

MB

BeAfraid wrote:
Also in the collection was a library worth about $150,000. It included one of eight copies of Daniel Webster's 16th or 17th Century Manuscript on Hunting Witches. That hasn't turned up either).

OW. If that is what my few minutes of research on google is what I think it is, I hope for your sake that's sitting in somebody's private collection somewhere as well.

I can sympathize to some degree...last summer our idiot upstairs neighbor burned down the entire apartment building...I lost 23 years of books, along with a number of other things, but the books tend to hurt the most, since they had the majority of our biggest irreplaceable items. (Everybody got out okay, everybody's pets go out okay, the building was a total loss).

Other than the Ebay mini you mentioned earlier, have you had any luck recovering anything out of the locker?

Sorry for your losses! I understand how the minis were not your top priority. More difficult to track the minis now, but if they were sold to someone who actually cares about them it might not matter.

If one was trying to find lost miniatures I guess the first thing to do would be to look for pictures of them. If your reputation was what you claim, maybe you can track down copies of old magazines and such? Maybe ask people you used to work or play with if they have kept magazines or photos? Maybe someone even have minis you painted? Any pictures would be extremely helpful I am sure.

If I was to guess I would say that the minis probably didn't travel too far. Getting your story in a local newspaper might be useful. I'm sure I would remember someone pushing 10k minis even if I wasn't a gamer myself.

zoat wrote:
Sorry for your losses! I understand how the minis were not your top priority. More difficult to track the minis now, but if they were sold to someone who actually cares about them it might not matter.

If one was trying to find lost miniatures I guess the first thing to do would be to look for pictures of them. If your reputation was what you claim, maybe you can track down copies of old magazines and such? Maybe ask people you used to work or play with if they have kept magazines or photos? Maybe someone even have minis you painted? Any pictures would be extremely helpful I am sure.

If I was to guess I would say that the minis probably didn't travel too far. Getting your story in a local newspaper might be useful. I'm sure I would remember someone pushing 10k minis even if I wasn't a gamer myself.

I didn't even think about trying to go to newspapers.

As for photos.... Very few exist. I know that my Thrudd miniatures that were at the Dalling Road store did show up in a WD around '84/''85.

I might be able to track those down.

But everyone else I painted for had the rather short-sighted habit of only publishing black-and-white catalogs (I am looking at you Ral Partha!), so the work I did was primarily used for convention displays.

As I said previously only the OGRE miniatures photos have survived that I can find.

But the Newspaper idea is a good one.

MB

A newspaper might be the logical next choice, especially if you're willing to share your story and talk about the missing rare books as well.

A good reporter mgiht even be able to do some legwork and find leads better than you can.

As for photos if you can remember a rough issue number for the WD someone here might be able to post scans.