Teddy Bear Auction

[Neil Graham]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-h ... r-63916024

Les Collard is a long time stalwart of Herefordshire Chess including county secretary and club champion of Hereford CC.

[Joey Stewart]

I have even played Les about 20 years ago, chess is extremely sparse in Herefordshire so he was most likely the best player in the county at the time

[Christopher Kreuzer]

The teddy bear collection was built up by his late wife, 4000 of them! An impressive value of over £60,000 for what appears to have only been part of the collection.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"An impressive value of over £60,000 for what appears to have only been part of the collection."

It helps if you're selling intact, good quality Steiff...

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Nice pun, Kevin!

The following (from a BBC News article three days ago, linked from below the one Neil posted above) was very moving (and also has details of the teddy bear specialist Daniel Agnew who helped organise the sale):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-h ... r-63858250

"[Susan Collard] bought their first bear, Rupert, for Mr Collard's 50th birthday in 1988 [...] Rupert was the first bear purchased by Mrs Collard, and Mr Collard said he intended to keep him."

There is a picture of Les with the teddy bear he is keeping.

At the start of the article from 3 days ago is a video (also showing the first teddy bear and more of the collection).

There is also an article from November:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-h ... r-63651268

With a line familiar to all dedicated collectors:

"It is quite a huge collection and was housed in a modest suburban house and took over four rooms completely while spilling into other rooms."