Ten members contributed articles to February’s newsletter. Several related accounts of the previous quarterly meeting – see News post below – but others covered a diverse range of jigsaw-related topics.
Coincidentally, Dave, John and Helen all wrote about their early puzzle collecting days, with both Dave and John relating how little one had to pay when they started their collections, for what are now highly collectable puzzles. Dave went on to point out how the Internet has transformed the hobby in the best way possible, by making both acquiring and disposing of puzzles much easier.
Jackie provided several articles: one on Victory Gold Box prices; another about a German hosted winter jigsaw mega-marathon where contestants aim to assemble as many jigsaw pieces as possible in a 72 hour period; a third on the Flickr Jigsaw Community and a fourth on recent eBay puzzle sales.
John Waller wrote about an interesting puzzle variation – “An Interchange Puzzle” containing a murder mystery story accompanied by a 180 piece puzzle of the murder scene, together with an additional 60 piece puzzle to make and lay over part of the original, to reveal the murderer! Julia shared her passion for picture puzzle postcards with a host of varied examples and Brian followed up Tom’s previous “Then and Now” article with his own comparison of pictures painted by A. R. Quinton and used for puzzles in the 1920’s and 30’s with the same scenes now.
Finally, Alan published a list of the first 80 BCD newsletters, dated from Dec 1985 to May 2006, to accompany his report of having successfully digitally archived them all and announcing their availability for sale, either as individually printed newsletters or a single CD containing all 80 as pdf files.