NEWSLETTER: 12 NOVEMBER 2024 - IN CEBU AND ON MACTAN ISLAND

Above a detail of the Christmas tree in the Radisson Blu Cebu hotel. And below, the hotel and how it looks in the early Cebuano night.

This beautiful five-star hotel has reasonable pricings, offers a southeast Asian classic luxury environment and services at more than reasonable prices. Occasionally we use the huge self-service restaurant that has private sections, for our company events or for a Sunday noon-meal or anniversary celebrations. The advantage of the city of Cebu and Mactan Island is that there is now a huge choice between luxury hotels: all big brands try to have at least one hotel in Cebu, the Queen city of the central Philippines, which is a huge archipelago with 7614 islands. For newcomers some more basic information on the Philippines.

The population is now estimated at a little more than 114 million people, divided in basically 6 main ethnic groups. Tagalog is the name of the main ethnic group from Luzon, to which the people of Manila belong. Conchology, Inc. is situated in the center of the Archipelago, and the ethnic group of the people surrounding us are called the Cebuano. More than 85% of the Filipino's are Christian, of which more than 78% are Catholics. A little more than 6% of the Filipino's are Islam.

The Philippines is a newly industrialized country, the economy is changing from agricultural to service and manufacturing. As such, the country is a member of several important world organizations, as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, ASEAN etc... Geographically it is close to the equator, it is a warm country prone to typhoons and earthquakes. The biodiversity is gigantic, and the marine biodiversity is one of the most impressive ones on the planet. I refer to our homepage www.poppe-images.com to get a glimpse of that one.

For the ones that have read Hans Rosling's masterpiece work "Factfulness", I can confirm that a huge part of the Philippines is now living in the level 4, with the lower levels disappearing rapidly, fortunately. Millions went through university and the main cities such as Manila, Cebu and Davao are impressive. The time that the Philippines was a "cheap" country is long gone, and prices for equal lifestyle as Europe are similar to European prices.

Because of Asian influences, the big cities in the Philippines have much in common with the other gigacities of the region such as Bangkok, Jakarta, Taipei or Shanghai and more than two dozen other jewels dispersed over the vast territory of southern Asia. Big luxury hotels are one of the advantages of these cities.

To be back to our subject, Radisson Blu Hotel invited us as a company and family to be part of their Christmas Tree Lighting event, which took place on 9 November, a Saturday night. Philippe and Mona were traveling in Negros Occidental, so I enjoyed the invitation with Sheila, her mom and her sister.

Here the Christmas tree, which is in the entrance hall. That wonderful tree is indeed impressive as it is about 10 meters in height. The machines at the base are there for a continuous light game, which forms patterns on the ceiling at 15 meters high and changes the colors of the tree. On the right, your author with from left to right Sheila, her mother and her sister. There were several hundred prominent guests, we got a great entertainment with an orchestra, opera singers and the like and we also enjoyed an excellent free meal and snacks for the evening.

The Cebu Philharmonic Orchestra (photo above) with amazingly beautiful symphonies, the powerful voices of the Cebu Normal University Chorale, (photo below) the enchanting soprano Myramae Meneses, and the incredible tenor Arman Ferrer, (upper photo, both on the right) "Christmas Classics at Radisson" brought world-class talent to the heart of Cebu.

The musical events took about one hour and a half, with the meals, we spend a happy four hours, before returning home late in the night. The evening made me realize how Cebu has changed from a provincial rather small city of a few hundred thousand people, 2 decades ago, when we installed, to a world class city of 3 million people at present. There are over a hundred skyscrapers, big hospitals - fortunately - with ultra-modern medical services, and a growing middle class of well doing. On nearby Mactan, two dozen grand hotels are often fully booked, and occasionally world events for big companies share the hotels to host sometimes many hundreds of guests for one congress. The airport then also gets busy with a small cloud of private planes from CEO's landing and leaving.

Despite all that the country still faces a big mass of people below the average level to get a good and safe life. One of the causes is that this kind of situation attracts each year tens of thousands escaping the country-side life which still lacks for example adequate medical services, running water and access to thousands of products that are only to be found in big cities. The pressure on places like Cebu and Mactan is, because of that, tremendous, but the Filipinos cope with it.

Back to more funny things. At the end of last month, on 31 October exactly, we feasted Halloween. A big thing for the locals: all houses and streets become decorated, especially with lighting fixtures in the night and the Island of Mactan changes in a fairy tale, full of joy with monsters, masks, Christmas deer, star and moon shaped decorations and the like. It is worthwhile to tour around to see the diversity and inventive achievements of the Cebuano that night. In our townhouse, we participated of course, and Sheila and Mona organized 7 stands in front of our houses, where we distributed 700 meals for children in less than 4 hours. Alex made his first decorative achievement in front of the house of Philippe, by creating two ghosts that stayed seated for two days...

Left: artwork by my grandson in front of his father's house. Right: 4 of the 5 distribution points for free snacks we organized - mainly Ice creams, French fries, hot dogs and fruit juices.   That night, all streets on Mactan are full of people, and driving cars goes slow and with the greatest care not to hurt anyone. Here the people busy in front of our house.  

BACK TO SHELLS

We now finished our YEARLY BLACK FRIDAY SALE, with all shells at half price. It was a HUGE success, with several thousands of specimens leaving our company to all corners of the globe, to join fabulous growing collections in many countries.

WE THANK ALL PARTICIPANTS for the continuous enthusiast support to Conchology, Inc.

The entire company stopped encoding and all of us were busy taking out the shells from the stocks and packing everything, under the guidance of Julie. It is a complicate exercise to pack so many parcels, but Julie and the ladies manage all this perfectly. The last parcel will leave Conchology, Inc. at the end of this week.

NEWS ON LITERATURE IN SHELLS

A grab of some numbers still around on my desk. I'll try to organize better arriving journals for future newsletters.

AMERICAN CONCHOLOGIST
Vol. 52, No. 3, September 2024

Is an interesting number: Tom Eichhorst made a nice article on Peter Dance, the well-known author and expert in the History of Shell Collecting. What makes this article particular, is the good bibliography of a, I think, quite complete list of the books and articles by S.P. Dance, followed by an interesting list of taxa named after S.P. Dance. I saw with pleasure my Acteon dancei G.Poppe, S. Tagaro & P. Stahlschmidt, 2015 listed on top of that list - for alphabetical reasons. The article took me back to the few days I could spend with Peter. At the end of his stay with me in Brussels, he told me I should "not miss the Nora Sale", which was the library of Nora going for sale by Schierenberg in Amsterdam. His advice changed the outlook of my library, as I could manage to acquire then the pre-Linnaean books of that library, still in our hands today.

Very amazing and interesting for the lovers of Turrids - I'm one of them - even I didn't describe that many of Turrids - is the article of Emilio F. Garcia on DRILLIIDAE and CLATHURELLIDAE collected by a research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. The article enumerates a serious number of members of these families, and the nice thing are the 3 good quality color plates figuring them all. Each species is also documented with coordinates and depth and size.

Wolfgang Wranik takes us on an adventure with a new "alien gastropod" in European waters: Haminella solitaria.

The number closes with always interesting varia about shell people and clubs.

NOVAPEX
Vol. 25(3), October 2024

Roland Houart goes strong with a classification update of the subfamilies, genera and species in recent MURICIDAE, with extra information on new taxa and "additional comments".

Frank Boyer & authors describe 3 new species of "marginelliformes" from Brasil, and more notes on Marginellids.

Yves Terryn and Marc Keppens describe a new TEREBRIDAE from the Pearl Islands in Panama.

J. Ponting has a replacement name for Tenguella Arakawa, 1965, and

Frank Boyer and Jose Rosado come with a new name for Marginella gabrielae Boyer & Rosado, 2024. Not to confuse with Marginella gabrielae Bozzetti, 1998.

The entire Novapex, once more richly illustrated in color.

NEWS ON COWRIES FROM RANDY BRIDGES

Whatever one collects, sooner or later, most of us get confronted with fakes. The limit between genuine and fake is sometimes hard to define. Even in shells this is the case: how far and how can you clean some shells before they are declared junk and not collectable any longer. There are dozens of other such questions.

Fakes and frauds have followed collectors of all walks of life since collecting started, more than two millennia ago.

Cowries are one of the multiple victims of regular frauds turning up. When and how can one call a cowry a fake? Most large cowries from the Philippines get a very light polish before touching the markets of tourists and/or collections. Are these fakes? For very discriminating collectors: YES. For the average collector: NO.

Our company agrees on a very light polish, if not, almost no tiger cowries will reach collections, as none of the mappa come in gem to the surface in the Philippines. We do not polish any shell in our company, but I know from my experience that the mappa reaching our company from multiple suppliers have been slightly ameliorated, as I never found one gem, even I dived over 90 pieces. These look very good: I donated all 90 pieces to the Houston Museum for study, and students can go there to see how "untouched" mappa look: for most, with the naked eye, not different from all the ones that have been slightly touched with a polish.

The same is true with lips of gastropods that are slightly filed. In my humble opinion this is acceptable as long as it is not obvious, as most shells don't come with perfect lips, especially not if they are not fully grown and old in age, with a thick lip...

Fakes and frauds are common in shells, and at the scale we acquire shells - we view every week more than a thousand pieces, and sometimes up to 5000 pieces a week, fakes turn up more than one expects. Before our company acquires shells, at least three experts in the subject have gone over them: Sheila, Jerlyn and your author. Together we viewed in the last twenty years several million pieces. Luckily that system "of triple expertise" avoided us LOTS of wrong purchases. To the benefit of our customers and shell lovers.

But there are frauds that in my humble opinion are not acceptable. These are faked albino shells, shells with the colors completely faked by heating shells and the like. The "shell doctors" as they are called are experts in repairing shells, situated mostly in Punta Engano in Mactan. While it is perfectly legitime to use them to ameliorate a shell that is imperfect, rare, and that deserves to be "repaired", it is not allowed to sell such a shell as genuine, after the repairs. Literally hundreds of visitors to Mactan, purchasing shells, went home with heavily repaired shells without knowing it. My adventures with these fakes that arrived often in prestigious museums and big collections can, after 5 decades in the conchological world, fill a thick book...

One case of "flagrant faking" turns regularly up in Zoila, and Randy Bridges tested the affair. Here I reproduce with his authorization Randy's text and photos on one particular case in the Zoila friendii.

"Randy Bridges.

Recently I was asked for my opinion on a couple of Zoila friendii specimens that were represented as "golden form". I shared with the owner this bit of info about the results when examining the shells under longwave UV illumination. Specimens that have been heated will always show a distinct white fluorescence of the interior of the shell. This image plate demonstrates the phenomenon with a comparison of a heated shell (top row) versus a natural un-heated specimen. There are other diagnostic features that can be examined, but this one is easy for anyone to try. After some articles were published in Hawaiian shell News in the 1970s it seems that some folks got pretty carried away with producing "golden forms" in their kitchen! Collectors might want to check their specimens!"

Upper row: the "golden" or "orange" form as these are occasionally called. Fake shells with a very light UV result. Below: the genuine shell: under UV very dark. With thanks to Randy Bridges for the text and the image.

We have no "auction results" this time, as because of the BLACK Friday campaign, there was no auction last weekend.

 

THE FOLLOWING AUCTION SHELLS OF THIS WEEKEND ARE QUITE FANTASTIC


THE BIGGEST CRIBRARIA WE EVER GOT - 41 MM

This unbelievable gigantic piece came in gem condition, with a superb pattern of white blotches set in oblique turning rows. In the upper half, three blotches linked with a thin line. The base is thick, calloused, definitely an adult.

We handled 2500 cribraria in 21 years, this is the BIGGEST of all of them: 41 mm! Without knowledge on biotopes - in general a rare species in the Philippines. We dived in 25000 dives with Guphil I, over a 15 year period, only 3 dozen cribraria. All in the same single area we knew where occasionally could find them and all between 18 and 28 m deep. The last world record size we know of is 40.8 mm, this is slightly bigger.

Prestigious and beautiful, an award deserving piece.

IN THE TOP THREE OF THE MOST FAMOUS CAPE VERDE CONUS

This wonderful and variable Conus ateralbus. This Conus lives mainly on Sal Island, from the shallow to fairly deep. I dived only a few ateralbus of good quality myself in my young years and that experience costed me almost my life. The usual base color is black with sparse white dots. Here three exceptions of great beauty, the white piece and the brown piece being EXTREMELY rare.

Few collections can show such an amazing variety in this uppermost beautiful one of all the Cape Verde Conus, which are numerous, but usually very small in size. I have no idea about the price tag this set can raise, but it should be considerable as here we have beauty combined with great rarity...

FROM A VINTAGE FRENCH COLLECTION,
A MAJOR "BLACK" CAURICA FROM NEW CALEDONIA

The vast majority of "The Blacks" as expert cypraeologists call these, come from French collectors, as they are found in a French colony: New Caledonia. Most of The Blacks have been collected between 1960 and 1980, and I did not see much freshly collected material...

Here a much better than average piece, in fact, a dream piece, for the black, the touch, the beauty: this shell has it all... read more on it during the auction.

PLEISTACANTHA MOSELEYI
A GIGANTIC DEEP SEE CRAB

This auction has exceptionally 25 lots, instead of our usual 24 lots, as I join this piece, which is not a shell, but an ultra-rare spider crab, known, as far as I'm aware of, by only 9 pieces, including the type. This Pleistacantha moseleyi, named by John Miers after Henry Moseley, one of the naturalists on the famous Challenger expedition that led to the discovery of this crab.

This crab comes from between 800 and 950 meters deep, from a net set near the Camotes Islands. 7 specimens were caught, about 10 years ago, and this is the third one we auction. One piece is exhibited since a long time in the showroom of Conchology, Inc. I do not know of any other material in private collections... The diameter of this giant museum piece is a stunning 492 mm.

CALL FOR ARTICLES FOR VISAYA

We are working on the next number of our journal Visaya. If you have articles ready for publication, we are open to look at these, and if they fit in the context of our conchological/malacological journal, we will happily publish them. We like articles with much iconographic work, so don't hesitate to include many photos... !

The end of 2024 will be a busy time for all of us. We wish you already now much enthusiasm and courage to go through the classic activities around Christmas and New Year, and all the preparations to go in pair with these days.

Enjoy shell collecting!

You can contact us:

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Please Visit:

https://www.conchology.be/ https://www.poppe-stamps.com/ https://auction.conchology.be/