Where to begin… It has been a very busy two months. Late in October, Brian Johnson, a special friend, a great gamer, and a committed supporter of HMS, died. Attending his funeral, meeting his coworkers and his brothers and sister, we were determined to help in some way. The family, who live out of state, were only able to spend only a few days to arrange for his estate. Brian had a small 2nd-story apartment with difficult access. This meant no on-site estate sale was possible. And the weather/apartment complex would not allow an outside one. Of the estate sale places in Denver who would move the estate to an auction house, only one returned a bid: $0 after paying for moving/disposal/apartment cleanup costs.
We felt the bid was an insult to Brian’s collection and to his family. He was a passionate collector as many of us are. One look at the thousands of his books and the many hundreds of well-cared-for games and DVDs, convinced us that his collections were of very special value, especially to gamers and those who shared Brian’s passions.
We proposed a better deal that we felt would help the family (and ultimately HMS at well). But this would take a real effort on our part while we waited for the printers to give us a firm slot. We also knew we would be without space to receive the printed components if they were to appear. The printer assured us that the earliest they could start on the remaining Total War components would be late February.
Clearing Brian’s apartment was an enormous amount of work. He had about 1000 wargames, 5000 books, 500 video games, 1500 DVDs/VHS tapes, several hundred family games, furniture, gaming tables, plexiglass, clothes, etc. in enormous stacks reaching to the ceiling everywhere so that even walking about the small apartment was very difficult. Everything had to be cleared immediately and this took eight 16-24 hour days in a row. The end result was that Gar’s garage, basement, and most of his front living/dining room were completely filled.
As part of the deal, we arranged for the sale of a number of the estate items for the family. This required time with various local bookstores and DVD stores, as well as contacts with various Denver gaming groups. We also advertised on Craig’s List and held a local sale in Gar’s apartment complex clubhouse. Finally, we put a number of items out on eBay for the family. Overall, we raised about $3500 for the family, with more to come once the last items sell on eBay. We also did the work to donate all of Brian’s clothes to Goodwill so the family easily could claim another $3500+ in tax write-offs.
After all the work for the family, HMS gained title to the rest of the estate. This means we have nearly 1000 wargames (with many, most unpunched), about 3000 books (including several hundred military history hardbacks and a lot of science fiction/fantasy), all the video games, and many, many other items. We will be selling these items both on eBay and through the HMS website.
The wargames and most of the books will be listed first on the website for direct sale, at a discount to Europa Association members (and if you have a pre-pub for Total War, you are automatically a Europa Association member until issues #88 and #89 of The Europa Magazine go into the mail); only if they do not sell here after about two months will they move to eBay.
We plan to have the wargames list (at least the list of unpunched games) on the website at least a week before we ship Total War. This will allow people who are interested to combine orders from the list with shipment of their Total War and thus save some on shipping costs. The books will probably not be listed until after Total War ships – but they will ship by Media Mail (Book Rate), so it would be a second order anyway. The punched games will be listed only after we have inventoried and sorted the components sometime later this year.
We have also begun selling a number of the estate items on eBay for HMS. This is quickly amassing the money we need to fully fund the shipping of Total War (we already had the money to finish the printing), and bodes well for accumulation of funds for some future HMS projects as well. For those who are interested, our eBay store is at:
http://www.ebay.com/usr/arthuredwardgoodwin.
Note: The dozen or so wargames listed there are the remaining ones we are selling for the family.
We just finished several days of inventorying, reboxing, and rearranging the remaining items at Gar’s house so that everything fit into the basement – thus leaving the regular storage facility and garage open to receive the final Total War material and to allow room for assembly.
We are now working again with the printer. We do not have a fixed print date yet for the remaining Total War items, but they expect to be able to begin returning our material at the end of February. We will now resume the game component samples – with another one below: The Ground Chart.
