New Additions to my Collection, Thanks Internet!

Firstly, sorry for the delay in posting some original material, that is to say, about how I'm wearing my bracelet and not news from Trollbeads. After all the lovely comments I had about my leather bracelet I have rested on my laurels a little and just continued to wear that bracelet.

But something awful happened a few weeks ago. I rediscovered eBay. This is only awful as my bank balance inevitably suffers when this happens. I went online to look for a CD and ended up searching for Trollbeads and going through pages and pages of beads!

To start with I was shocked at how many fake beads there were on eBay pretending to be real Trollbeads, I was shocked at the blatant copies, one set even boasted being Hallmarked L*A*A* (where Trollbeads are Hallmarked LAA for Lise Aagard) I would definitely be very careful about buying beads from there, if it looks too good to be true it probably is! Having said that, there were a lot of cheap beads on there (lots of them starting at 99p) but I soon realised that they tend to go up from there rather quickly as the time for bidding comes to an end. I think all us collectors have an idea of how much they would like to spend on them, it does mean you can't get some bargains though.

I found a lovely private seller that was selling a bracelet they had bought but never worn. It had a silver bracelet (which turns out to be the perfect size for me!) a Simple Clasp, 4 Glass beads that aren't Troll but are very pretty (Christmas is 3 months away, so I shan't be wearing them, but gifting them) silver Troll Fairy, Mermaid and the most excitingly the old retired silver Smiley bead! Having seen one of these beads on Amanda’s (a customer and now a forum friend) bracelet at work I knew I needed it. Yes, needed!
I placed my bids and was lucky enough to win it. Below is close up of my Smiley bead.

 
I also found another private seller who was selling a few silver beads at a really good price, unfortunately (Or fortunately if you are my bank balance) I lost out on Three Siblings and Midgard Serpent. But I did win the very lovely (and a bit more square than I realised) retired Viking Trollbead and Trollopoly (Trollbeads Monopoly). It turns out the seller works at Robert Gatward in Reading, around the corner from the Beaverbooks I started working in. I often went into RG to have a nosey as they stocked some really lovely brands that we didn't. The strangest thing is that one of the seller's colleagues now works at Clive Ranger Cribbs (opposite Beaverbooks) and had popped in to say hello a couple of days earlier! It's a small world!

I thought I was all bought out so imagine my surprise when another parcel turned up at work with my name on (you know you have a problem when you don't remember what you have ordered!) this parcel held a really lovely Blue/See through OOAK (One Of A Kind, now called Uniques, as you will often find lots that look similar but aren’t part of the main Trollbead collection) for which I paid a bit more than I should’ve, but it is lovely (a bit smaller than I thought it might be though), and another OOAK which has a pattern to match a purple bead I got a Trollbeads HQ.

So this is how I am wearing all my new beads, Hope you like it:

All photos are courtesy of my little sister Grace, and are taken on my (not so younger (he's 13 tomorrow) brother Joseph's Art book