E-bay!

I love e-bay. I am by no means a pro-e-bayer, but Leah has taught me a thing or too. When I first moved to Israel, my Israeli parents took me to the apartment of Yuval's paternal grandparents. His grandfather had recently passed away and the grandmother was living in an assisted living home. They had me go through the apartment to see if there were things I wanted, before they gave the rest of the objects away.

One of the items I found was a little tiny, pewter viking boat with a minature spoon. I thought that the boat was made to contain the little sugar replacement pills for coffee and tea that are common in Israel. I took it with me, along with pots and pans and a few other odds and ends. When I moved from Israel, I left it behind. I've never seen little sugar substitute pills in the US, so I thought I wouldn't be able to use it. There were so many items I was choosing between that I ended up just leaving it behind.

When I was staying with Leah over Passover, she had a tiny round container with a minature spoon that reminded me of the viking ship. I asked her what it was and learned that it was a salt cellar and that salt cellars are coming back in a big way because there are so many fancy salts of different kinds now. Many of these fancy salts have bigger crystals than normal table salt, so a salt cellar makes sense. I immediately wrote to Yuval and asked him to include the viking ship in the final shipment of my items that were coming from Israel.

He wrote back and told me that he had thrown the ship away in the move. I was more than disappointed, but what could I do? Now, several months later, I started looking on e-bay. I figured any salt cellar would be a nice memento and fun to have. After a few minutes of searching I found the boat! It was for sale by an antiquest dealer in Arizona. I bid and won. It is apparently a souveneir from Norway and I think the one I had owned was as well. It's kind of amazing that two Israelis could go to Norway, buy a little boat, take it back to Israel with them sometime in the 60-70s and I could buy the same little boat 30 years later from someone in Arizona. That is why I love ebay.