Chess Collectors International - USA News and Looking for a Webmaster

Hola darlings!

Yes yes yes, I've been very delinquent, I know.  I've been consumed with gardening and traveling.

You'll see the news in the post below this one about the fantastical "discovery" and sale at auction of a genuine Lewis chess piece (a "Warder") on July 2, 2019 for nearly $1 million.  Although I am a reader of The Washington Post, I somehow missed this story - but then I realized I was visiting one of the family compounds up north Wisconsin and was out of my usual routine of reading the WaPo news much more thoroughly than I do while on vacation :)  Anyway, it's an incredible story.  As far as I've been able to determine, the piece was sold to an "anonymous" bidder.  Wonder who it was...

CCI USA is also looking for a webmaster.  Here's the "ad" from the news letter/magazine:

CCI needs a web presence!  Unfortunately, it's been several years since CCI has had a functioning English language website.   Crazy, right?  We are looking for a volunteer who can create and maintain a basic, no-frills website for the club on one of the free or inexpensive services such as Wix, Go Daddy, etc.  If you have web design and development skills, and would like to be our club's new webmaster's, please contact Tom Gallegos at livinginthepast@comcast.net and let's discuss.  

The other big news is the planned CCI 19th Biennial Congress set for May 27 - 31, 2020 in St. Lewis.  I attended an earlier biennial, also held in St. Louis, in 2011 (how time flies!) and it was wonderful!  It coincided with the Kings v. Queens chess tournament at the St. Louis Chess Club as it's popularly called, directly across the street from the lovely building housing the World Chess Hall of Fame where I was able to watch live action and also spent considerable time in the lower level listening to the live games coverage by the commentators, IM Jennifer Shahade and GM Yasser Seirawan.  I also did a lot of exploring of the local neighborhood around the club, the chess museum and the hotel where I was staying and posted about it at this blog.  Here's one of the posts about the Kings v. Queens Tournament.