Post #622063 by Aquatic Safarinaut on Sun, Jan 22, 2012 10:16 PM

Mahalo everyone for the congrats...

Sven wins the prize...it was a collector selling off his collection.

Every once in awhile we meet someone who is really cool…

I first saw the collection back in November on craigslist. I contacted the seller and arranged to visit. When I got there he was quite impressed that I would drive the two hours from Vallejo to see his collection. The guy turned out to be a prolific collector of all kinds of different things, tiki mugs being just one of his interests. He thought tiki mugs were cool and he enjoyed the hunt but he wasn’t really that into “tiki” and he felt that it was time he let the collection go.

We spent quite a lot of time talking about collecting, his collection and how he got into mugs. I was having a great time just chatting. Eventually we got down to negotiations. He wanted to sell the collection intact and was asking a price that was realistic but on the high end of realistic…For me it was quite a lot of money… I had many of the mugs already and was hoping I could talk him into selling just a few…but he didn’t want to part out the collection…eventually he lowered his price significantly but it was still more than I could bring myself to do…so we parted on great terms, no mugs trading hands …but I had met a really great guy, enjoyed looking at a very nice collection and the 4 hour round trip into the gold country was beautiful…

Fast forward to two weeks ago…I get an email with a new offer, one I just could not refuse. This time I come home with over 70 mugs…He told me that had thought it over during the holidays and had decided that he really wanted me to have the collection.

So that’s the story…

I’ve seen so many amazing scores on this site… it was my turn be lucky…the next time it will be one of you…and along the way you’ll make a lot of friends…keep up the search!