Spurred on by the previous posts I just did a spreadsheet count and found 788 listed items including the Limited Editions, GLOW's, Christmas issues and ornaments, Historic Buildings, Scenic Views, Days Gone By, Thumbnails, Regional, Reunion, & Event pieces and exclusives, a Pharos set, most of the Little Lights of Mine, a few of the Guardians of the Night, a few artist proofs, some of the variations, a Bill doll, a few trees and one balloon (but no Knights). And lest I forget I also have my office display of 7 L.E. pieces that fall into the "cannot be displayed unless they originally cost less than $12 each" category. These are the "nicks and dings" purchases that look new after a little touching up and that can't be lessened in value by the cleaning crew.

However, even though all good things may not come to an actual complete end, they certainly do slow down drastically. Our collection has reached that point and is fairly close to being as complete as its going to get. Similar to the situation being faced by more and more collectors, we're now out of space. I won't buy a bigger home and I won't store pieces offsite. We've only picked up a few pieces in the past year and a half and I really don't expect to get many more in the future. It's really unfortunate that at a time when the scultures have become so ornate and detailed that we find ourselves totally out of room to even display all of the ones that we already own. I've already started the process of throwing away the packing materials and flattening boxes to retrieve some of my basement real estate (I can hear the purists gasping, but that's okay - we didn't buy the scultures to resell them.). Hopefully, that will at least let me unbox the final few that haven't yet seen the light of day.

I will mention one disadvantage to having a larger number of pieces on display. We're currently painting the house and every piece and associated curio cabinet has to be moved - at least twice. Oh well, into every life . . . .