Leon Virjland's Corkscrew Story.

Hi Steven,

Herewith a small story of how I started collecting.

My Dad worked long time in France and started collecting corkscrews.

As Dad had an eye disease and was almost blind, we helped him finding corkscrews at fleamarkets.

At a certain moment we went out to look for corkscrews for his collection without him participating in the search.

When visiting a fleamarket I did found a barman and a clown from Gemelli and knew I had seen them in a book somewhere.

I bought both for my dad but decided that I wanted to keep them myself while they were quite cute … and as they are part of 6 / 7 (as I found out later) I liked to have the whole series.

But looking on the internet to find the other ones, it became clear that there are much more corkscrews and when I started buying one or two different types, the start of collecting had begun …

As a go with for my dad at an CCCC Meeting in France, the world of corkscrew collecting became visible and understandable that we were not the only lunatics …

Collecting went very slowly in the first couple of years as most of the corkscrews were bought for dad’s collection but the longer I looked for them and helped dad to find nice pieces, the more interested I became myself.

The Gemelli series is complete and my collection is much more developed now and although I still look for pieces for my dad’s collection, his specialty is different than mine !

Well, hope you have a nice other story; pictures will follow lateron.

Cheers,

Leon