Back in 1988 when we sent out our first list, we went through every shell magazine we could to find collectors’ addresses. Back then, selling shells was not as easy as now with the Internet, not to mention the slow speed of the whole process. We were able to gather about 300 addresses, mailed our first list and waited for the returns with high expectations. Collectors who received our list, as expected, were a little afraid of placing large orders. After all, no one had heard of two Brazilian brothers selling shells before, yet we got a great response and many orders. Among those was one from Bunnie Cook in Hawaii. She was very satisfied with our shell shipment and placed several more orders until 1990, when we told her that our family would be going to Hawaii, and we would love to visit her. We were amazed by her beautiful home and the quantity of shells in her collection; she was a very active collector, both trading and self-collecting. We returned several times to Hawaii and always spent some time with her, including shelling in Pearl Harbor with George and their friends Trudy and Bill Ernst.

Bunnie traveled to many countries all over the world: American Samoa, Antigua, Aruba, Australia, Bahamas, Barbuda, Brunei, Costa Rica (both sides), French Polynesia, Fiji, Florida, Guam, Hawaii, Honduras, Kosrae, Kwajalein, Majuro, Malaysia, Martinique, Massachusetts, Mexico (both sides), New Caledonia, New Zealand, North Marianas, P.N.Guinea, Palau, Panama (both sides), Pohnpei, South Africa, Senegal, Solomon Is., St. Croix, Texas, Tonga, Truk, Tuamotus, Vanuatu, Virgin Is. and Western Samoa. She was very good at finding shells and fearless also, doing a lot of night snorkeling and diving. She kept a collecting journal about every trip she made, recording dates, accurate locality, collecting info, species and quantity collected. She and George also spent a lot of time preparing their shells before adding them to the collection. She was very particular about opercula; she and George would remove the animal and glue the operculum back, no matter how small the shell. Also, no matter how many specimens were collected, she would write a label for every single one in the lot. Those labels were written by hand until the end!

Bunnie went to many COA conventions - the last one in 2006 in Mobile, Alabama. Although she was already having some health problems, she did not stop enjoying her collection. She passed away on May 20, 2008 and left instructions to George to donate her collection to a local museum.

In March 2009, I had the usual problem: where to get more shells to offer on our lists. I was going to use the scientific method of throwing a dart at the world map in my office when I looked at Hawaii and thought: “Why not go there to purchase shells from local dealers and from there fly to some Pacific Ocean Island”? I contacted some local dealers and called George to plan a visit. I knew he no longer had the collection as I had heard about the museum donation, but wanted to pay a visit anyway as I had done on every past trip to Hawaii. When I told him I was going to purchase shells from local dealers he replied: “Well, I also have some shells to sell”! I thought he had some leftovers from the collection that the museum did not want, but it turned out that he had not donated the collection after all because the museum had requested $25,000 to pay for the cost of curation, storing and cataloguing all shells.

I was unprepared to make such a purchase; did not know how to appraise such treasure on this short notice. I told George and his daughter Janice that I had two options: pick through the collection and buy only the best shells, or make an offer for the whole thing, explaining that it was obviously less than its value since it would take me years to sell them all. Bunnie did not have many rare shells, as most were self-collected material, but I figured that it would be a great addition to our stock anyway. I did not want to push and said they could take several days before giving me an answer, but they accepted my offer.

On previous trips, I never had time enough to look at the entire collection. To preserve her memory, I took pictures of all drawers before the shells were removed. As I did that, I realized that it would take a long time to pack all those shells - much longer than I had foreseen. I could not simply dump the shells in a bag and risk mixing labels and discarding the important data that she had gathered with much effort over such a long time. So I called Jose and told him he was needed to help in packing all those shells. He arrived a couple days later.

We spent 8 hours a day for the next 12 days to carefully pack each drawer. We did not finish the job and had to return a couple of weeks later and spent another 15 days! While packing, we could sense how important shells were to Bunnie. It was possible to feel the passion she had for those shells every time we read each tiny label she had written, the way she arranged each drawer, the organization of books and even of vials she kept for sorting grit for micro shells. We shipped over 100 parcels to Miami, plus 8 suitcases! While working there every day George and Janice thanked us many times for taking such care with the shells and then came to wonder how they would have managed to ship the collection elsewhere if we had not purchased it.

Some shells were not saleable and we donated them to the Hawaiian Malacological Society along with 6 large trash bags full of plastic boxes that we removed from the collection. I felt the urge to take those hinged boxes, but could not justify the freight nor did we have space to store them. The club, no doubt will be able to make good use of them.

We still have thousands of shells to work with; we’ve barely scratched the surface on some families. Specimens that we can’t sell due to quality problems will be donated to Sao Paulo’s University Museum MZUSP and will partly fulfill Bunnie’s final wish to donate to a museum.

I am proud to be able to work with shells from such a passionate collector. I am sure her work will not be forgotten as her shells will be dispersed to hundreds of other great collections all over the world!

PS. I also placed some other pictures from Honolulu, Waikiki Aquarium and the shell club meeting.