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Posted By: howard

Whatever you do make sure that you leave written instructions. When my brother was dying he made a point of telling my parents that he wanted me to have his cards but he didn't want to ask me because he was afraid I wouldn't want them. Of course I wanted them but my brother was a little paranoid due to the nature of his disease(a brain tumor). He had only a few pre-war cards but a superb collection of Topps and Bowman from the late 1940's through about 1980. When I felt the time was right I asked him about the cards and we had a big emotional episode with both of our stoic facades collapsing simultaneously.

When he did pass (without a written will) his wife said that my brother wanted to keep the collection together and that it should be jointly owned by my other brother (who never collected cards)and I and that they should be kept by my brother because he has a ton of storage space. Effectively, I now do not own these cards in any real way. They sit in my brother's basement a thousand miles away and I assume they will go to his kids when he dies in forty or so years.

Howard