Sorry that I haven't been on the forum for some time. I won't go into details but my problem has been ill health.
I am in Azerbaijan at the moment, but I expect to be returning to the UK and remaining there full time by the end of March. I will also be in the UK for two weeks towards the end of February, but may have to stay in hospital for some of that time.
I have noticed that some forum members had not seen any of the items that I had posted on eBay, (Ulrich in particular). This was my fault because they appeared only on ebay UK. It was the first time that I had used eBay and I wrongly assumed that these items would be visible on all eBay sites.
Some of you will remember that I had intended to list more items on eBay when I was at home in the UK at Christmas time, but unfortunately I wasn't well enough to do it when I was at home at that time.
By the way, a small message to Juhani,"I have not forgotten you Juhani and I will be in touch when I return home to England".
So for Ulrich and others I will definately be listing many more items on eBay,"worldwide" towards the end of March, or perhaps a little sooner if I am able to at the end of February.
Of course I will still be keeping a collection, but seriously trimmed down from what it was. As it is I don't have the space at home to display all the cameras and also many are duplicated several times over, it would be just selfish to keep all of them. So now I will keep a far smaller collection of mainly just my favourite cameras, which will of course include a complete "family" of Fed-1's taking pride of place. And of course some cameras that hold special memories for me.
The last time that I listed on eBay I listed only about twenty percent of the cameras that I had intended to part with, so there is still a long way to go. This time my son-in law and daughters will help me to list the items and do the packaging, etc. So for me it will be much easier than the last time. I suppose I must still have something between 120 and 150 cameras to list on eBay plus lenses and other items. I imagine that of these there will be around forty to fifty Fed-1's, (mostly types 1b - 1c- and 1-d) and a similar number of Zorki-1's, of all types. There are also all types of Fed-2, from early (no synch) to late, (lever wind).
When I was at home in December I had also really wanted to help with classifications and was very dissapointed that I couldn't. It had been my intention to log the serial numbers of all of my Fed-1's, Zorki-1's, Fed-2's, Kiev-II's, III, IV's etc, but at the time I wasn't able to do this. So this is something else that I need to do when I return home. This information was also intended to provide Forum Members with information about the cameras that I had available, though of course not every camera will be for sale because I still intend to keep some for myself.
when I list these items on eBay I will be as honest as I can and describe the items as accurately as I am able, but I would like all members to know that they can return any item they are not happy with for a full refund and no argument.
I think the main beauty of the cameras that I have collected is that I bought them all more than twelve years ago from mainly Russian families who were leaving Uzbekistan to go back to Russia after Uzbekistan had gained independance. It was a time of great change in Uzbekistan and I met many great people and had many adventures and interesting experiences during these years in the course of building my camera collection. I was even arrested by the Uzbek version of the KGB at one point, (but only for two hours)
.I owe a lot to Russian camera in general. For example I made some good friends through collecting Russian cameras in the past and that remains equally true today because I consider that other Forum Members are also my friends. Also by visiting second hand bazaars and talking with people in the FSU I learned to speak fluent Russian. This probably would never have happened if I hadn't started collecting Russian cameras.
So once again apologies for my absence. Hopefully I can once again now join in the discussions.
All the best to everyone, Jim.
