Fubar

I would be surprised if the dates didn't mean something to your grandfather. Kept in a Queen Mary tin and no date later than 1919. A full run from 1912 to 1919 may be significant. Maybe change kept from his pay or even the profits from games of "Put & Take". I have some collections like these and I wouldn't assign an indvidual value to each item in a collection. The value is in the group and possible explanations for its existence.

When I worked as an auction house valuer stamps were the bane of our existence. Really difficult and time consuming to value and treasures could be easily missed. Ordinary, run-of-the-mill, stock books would either not sell, go for peanuts, or, in the rare case when we'd missed something..... but they had to be spotted. An auction house with a track record for good results in philately is the best bet just as with coins. I have my father's and my brother-in-law's collections sitting in my study waiting for me to make up my mind what to do next. Either submit them to auction and hope for the best, leave them where they are or just hope that a grandchild may be interested.

Merry sailings and happy voyaging through life to all.

The text based sign in page I've had recently finally disappeared the other day and now there's a new graphical version. 👍

Photo corners still exist and may do the same job.

In the UK the auction houses charge the same commission to the vendor and the purchaser "usually". So they make it on both ends of the deal. Some USA auction houses are now advertising the you only pay the hammer price. I haven't noticed this in the UK - yet.

Middle of October and our Passiflora is still covered in flowers.

The Campanula have flowered. Almost overpowering everything else

I can't really remember ever having actually played marbles. My dad was an engineer so I could get an almost unending supply of ball bearings from really small ones to two inch monsters. This meant that I was more of a broker than a player and could supply whatever was required, for a price. Usually in glass marbles at a favourable exchange rate. Most of my collection ended up being distributed among various cousins when I moved on to motor bikes. So now I have also lost most of mine........

Ball bearings of all sizes were "Bollies" in 'Ull. Can't remember what big marbles were called probably summat like "Big uns". We liked to keep things simple.

That's the one. 👍 Also comes in white.

Mine is much like yours before the makeover. I've not bothered with any planting this year apart from some gladioli corms left over from last year. Fortunately the globe artichokes, primroses and the campinola (?) can be relied upon to take the eye away from the rest of the jungle. The "grass" is fighting a losing battle with the moss as usual but you can't really tell when it's been scalped. Not sure what he was looking for in our suburban Yorkshire border but he didn't find it.

Nothing more to say. RIP

There are several reasons that the auctioneer will start below the lower estimate - There is no reserve. The reserve is lower than the bottom estimate. He thinks the estimate/reserve is too high and he wants to move on quickly. He's going to bounce bids "off the wall" to get interest going. (He's allowed to do this in a limited way up to the reserve by law) He's trying it on as previously suggested but this is rare and self defeating. I could never understand the secrecy about reserves. As a porter I was only allowed to say that it wouldn't be higher than the lower estimate. Don't forget the estimate is usually based on guesswork and a wee bit of research. The reserve is totally down to the customer and the auctioneer can only recommend a figure. A lot of customers usually have an inflated idea of the worth of an object. A lot of estimates are a bit like basing who is going to win a football match by reference to teams from 10 years ago. 🤣

Our local household waste site has a specific bin for printer cartridges but the collection leaflet we have just received doesn't mention them at all. So I suppose they have to go into the non-recyclable bin unless you take them yourself.