I'm glad you were taking pictures, Lew. I forgot my camera this year.
I've been meaning to do a page on past shows for Lee to put somewhere on vikingsword.com, but being me, I let such things get pushed aside all too easily. If anyone has photos, please send them to me and I promise that I will get it done this year!
Flavio - the Manday is Jose's (lucky devil).
All of the displayed items were beautiful, as usual. I didn't have time to complement you on the polish & etch jobs on your gunang, Steve, which I understand you did yourself. Excellent work.
I picked up a nice story dha from Avner, which I have been eyeing for a while. It is unusual in having niello worked into the ferrule and pommel. I am in the process of correcting a sloppy repair done sometime in its distant past, but I'll post some pics when it is done. I also won a nice dha at the auction, but wasn't able to pick it up immediately because my bid hadn't been registered for some reason and they had to sort out the paperwork. However, Oliver has been very quick and professional in sorting out the mix-up. I must say that dispite my annoyance at it having been planned at the same time and place as the seminar, it was a very good and well-run auction. Its hard to say if it drew a significant number of people away from the talk - there were a couple of walk-ins for us, and several people circulated between the two events as lots of interest came up. I understand that next year it won't be scheduled to conflict with the seminar.
BTW, when did it finally end? I left at around 11:30pm, and they were somewhere in the low 300's, with just over 400 lots total in the auction. A long night.