The Collector

The Collector (Nine Inch Nails)

I pick things up

I am a collector

And things, well things, they tend to accumulate

I have this net

It drags behind me

It picks up feelings

For me to feed upon

There are times, plenty of times

I wish I could let it go

But they start to breathe, and they start to grow inside me

There are times, plenty of times

I wish I could let it go

But they start to make me think things I don’t wanna know.

For those who requested the actual music, I will work on it for a future blog but today I want to tell the story in photo’s of an incredible bridge ephemera collection.  Peter Hasenson lives in a lovely flat in London.  Shireen drove us over for a visit and Peter was very pleased to show us some of his collection.  He has a good collection of books and magazines although he still needs to complete his collection of Bridge World.  If you are selling your collection you might want to email Peter.

A few of Peter’s books and magazines

But a lot of his collection are interesting items associated with famous people.  Some just fun and some having historical importance.  For example, below is a master point slip which belonged to Harrison Gray.

If you are unfamiliar with Harrison Gray than here is the start of his wikipedia entry:

Maurice Harrison-Gray (1899 – 24 November 1968),^[1] known always as ‘Gray’, was an English professional contract bridge player. For about thirty years from the mid-thirties to the mid sixties he was one of the top players, and won the European Championship four times.

Peter had a huge collection of wonderful pictures of bridge players on his computer, many from world championships or other events from long ago.  It was rather fun to look at them and he Ray and Shireen scanned them for quite a while.  One of the most interesting things in his collection was a folder filled with items about the Reese Shapiro cheating scandal.

It is nice to see bridge in the news but I can’t help wondering if those were the good old days or the bad old days.  I noticed that bridge got into the news again recently when a British bridge player who argued constantly with his wife over their duplicate games murdered her.  That made the papers.  I guess negative news is where the fun is.

Peter has a large number of items with signatures.  Here is a menu from a World Championship signed by many of the stars.

I can make out a lot of the signatures including Bee and Howard Schenken, B. Jay Becker, Peter Leventritt, Sammy Kehela.  I can’t quite make out all of the menu though.  Of course Peter has many more items but I thought you might like a taste of his collection.  If anyone out there has a collection they would like to talk about then let us know.  And thanks Peter for sharing.