If I might have a moment or two of your time, I'd like to talk to you all about a very serious subject, one that we rarely if ever discuss, paticularly in association with our miniature gaming.

DEATH! In particular, our own. Unfortunately it's a subject that every last one of us is going to become acquainted with on an upclose and personal basis eventually. Hopefully we all have insurance and savings so our families will be cared for. I hope too, that most of us have had the forethought to prepare a Will, thus allows for our preferred disposition of most of our worldly goods, or so we hope. But what about our figures.

I bet it's a very few of us that's included these things in our Wills. Nor do I see many of us bringing this matter up at a Saturday night gaming session between beers and rolling dice. But I would urge all of us to mention it sometime to our spouses and write it down and slip it in with our Wills. Just take a moment or two and do it.

Let me explain the incidents that have caused me to consider this and you may agree with my cause for concern.

The first was almost two years ago. I was down at Modelerts Mart (I live in Tampa), and an older lady came in saying she had some "stuff" she wanted to get rid of. It had belonged to her late husband and she was tired of it cluttering up the house. She wanted "$200.OO for everything!" This turned out to be the largest collection of ACW stuff I have ever seen: over 5000 figures (15mm), terrain (buildings, hills, rivers, towns), over 300 artillery with crew pieces, wagons and teams, you name it if It was part of the ACW this guy had it. Not to mention 40 books on the subject. It was an amazing collection! She had no idea of the real worth of her husband's collection and just wished to be rid of it for a few extra dollars. She was put in touch with a couple of well moneyed ACW players and received aver $4000.00 for the complete collection. The two guys who bought it consider it to be the best bargain they've ever come across. The widow came away very happy as well.

The 2nd incident happened a couple months later. A friend of mine who owns a pawn shop had bust taken in "i or 8 boxes of these little metal guys", would I come over and tell hin what he had. I went over more than a little curious. He had 8 custom made large wooden boxes of 25mm Napoleonic French troops: cavalry, infantry, and artillery. All painted and finished to a very high standard. The guy who brought them in claimed they belonged to his dead or other.

They had tried to sell them at a garage sale the month before and couldn't even get $50.00 for the lot of them, would he be interested in them. My friend gave him $100.00 and the guy never returned to claim them. My friend got into miniature gaming due to this, so this incident had an upbeat conclusion in a way. But it could have easily ended very differently.

The most recent incident occured when I recently attended HAVOC X in Massachusettes. I unintentionally overheard and then entered into a conversation with two area gamers. It seems that a mutual friend of theirs had died a few months before. A few weeks after, they approached the family about the friends miniatures, primarily out of curiosity. They learned that his figures had been donated with his clothing to a local Rescue Mission Thrift store. The friends immediately stopped by the store hoping to rescue their friend's figures from the Rescue Mission. The friends were appalled to learn that the Rescue Mission, having learned that the figures were primarily lead in content, promptly dropped the figures in the dumpster out back a few days before. A frantic run to the dumpster fulfilled their worst fears, the dumpster had been emptied! The friends went on and on about the extensive nature of the collection, primarily medieval (15mm) and WWII (20mm). And how devastated the deceased would be if he knew the tragic end his collection had come to. The collection he lavished thousands of dollars and countless hours on!

I spoke to the friends about my idea for this article, they enthusiastically urged me to take pen in hand. I don't want to get up on a soapbox and preach to you all about planning for the inevitalbe, gloom, doom, etc., but I would that you might want to take 30 seconds, scribble something down on a piece of paper and pop it in with the life insurance policy or take a moment and mention to your spouse what you would like to have done with your figures. When I recently mention this article to a gaming friend of mine, he jokingly laughed that he wanted his figures put in the pyramid with him. But then grew serious for a moment and reflected, "Geez, I don't know but I'm gonna think about it". I would suggest that you all might want to take a second or two and do the same.