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a lovely home and the guest accommodation is very, very comfortable, the food very
tasty and you can spend time in Jim’s bottle room where you may well realise that your
own collection pales into insignificance. You will also find that Jim will take you to
bottlestores, known to him, and where you can increase your collection with bottles
unseen in New Zealand. I was fortunate that Jim is in the process of rationalizing his
collection- probably for the umpteenth time - and had a number of Scotches for sale so I
relieved him of quite a few.

On the Wednesday evening the Crawfords hosted other Mid-Western members for a
meal and I met Seva Trakhtman, accompanied by his Mother, from New York and
Wayne Full and wife Norine from Buffalo- and we didn’t talk about bottles all the time
though it did get a mention!! (I feel a Tui Ad coming on!)

Thursday saw us off to St Louis, a trip of several hours with a pleasant stop at
Effingham before a foray around the bottlestores of St Louis. At one of these we met up
with Butch and Sandy Jones who are, like Jim, leading lights in the Midwest club. Again
I found some more bottles as did they. That evening we, Jim & Nancy and Butch &
Sandy , went to dinner at the home of a deceased club member’s wife and met the
Dobyns Family - I was shown where his collection had been and the area it had taken
up. The construction of what I think may be tornado shelters under homes is an ideal
place for a huge collection. I believe this collection was sold in total to the bottle
museum in Norway. A very pleasant evening and I did get a better chance to chat with
Butch.

We were staying at the Sheraton Plaza Hotel and they set
aside a huge venue for the show. On Friday evening the
club provides a very pleasant meal, followed by an
Auction which I enjoyed this time much more than in 2001.
I also put up two auction items at Jim’s suggestion and
was pleasantly surprised at the results. There were some
very nice items up for sale.

Early Saturday morning we are in the venue setting up the
sales tables. I was fortunate that Jim had registered me as
a salesperson so I put my bottles next to his with a sign
advising that they were from New Zealand. Having set up
I was able to roam the show looking for what I would really
like to purchase as I did have a few bottles that I really
wanted if they were there:- eg. the Ski Country Squirrels plaque to give me all of them
and I found one at a very good price!! Once again I noticed quite a variance in prices!!

I was able to purchase some of my “wants” and some other ceramics before the show