Well in a way I can give a sigh of relief as I Dennis & Matt, have had this on our backs for a long time, the not knowing 100% & hoping we were not all taken for a ride, I think we all had the right intentions & just wanted to help a fellow member out in there time of need.
Someone on the thread about her collection said it would be a nice gesture if a little something was sent to make her feel better & know we were behind a member down on there luck, I had time on my hands at the time & figured it was my turn to put some effort back in to this great forum that has given so much to me over the years.
I put a stupid amount of effort in to making this one not to forget & not only posted about the collection here but also on TIG & RS to get the best response possible & both Matt & Dennis put a hell of a lot of effort in to this as well & we 3 coordinated the collection getting to her/him in one go & as has been said even a personalised plaque was done by my good lady as a little reminded, maybe I should have just got her to do a huge sigh saying fool & put it in front of the pc screen.
As Dennis has already pointed out the communications from Deborah/it went from bad to worse to non existent & we sent her a very to the point email stating that she owed the members at very least a thank you post & some photos, the thank you post came up as well as a couple of rather odd & disjointed emails, the photos (as we suspected) never turned up & we (the 3 of us) got to the point of having put so much effort in that we had to walk away from the situation before it drove us all crazy & put us out of the hobby, we suspected that if we let sleeping dogs lay then at some point it would all come out in the wash & thankfully it now looks like it is doing.
May I also add that as well as the donations of toys & cash there is a member on RS who works for a well know computer manufacturer, who very kindly offered to donate a laptop (a bloody nice one may I add) that we also had sent to her so she could get back to normality & come back on line & post some thanks - what a joke, we all feel like fools over this I can tell you & we all feel terribly about asking members to donate not that things have turned out the way they have, it will not stop me being who I am & will not change my giving & caring nature, but I will be on high alert from now on & be a hell of a lot more cautious in whom I help.
Some background -
I spoke via pm with what we thought to be Deborah a couple of time about baggie multi-packs prior to all this & gave advice on them.
She was buying several from a guy I know & there was one I was interested in, she realised I wanted it & kindly (so I thought at the time/but may also have been a scam in some way) said she would step aside & I could have the pack, I declined as the deal was done & I would not like to deprive someone of something they want & had already done a deal for - this was in my mind when I offered to put my best foot forward & do the coordinating of the donations.
I also knew from contact with Steve @ UKG that she was know for sending items in for grading & did indeed have a nice collection of high end items, so figured it was safe to do the donation thing.
I am truly sorry for the members who donated cash & toys (& there time & good will) to this effort & hope that it will not sour them from making the hobby an enjoyable one for us all.
Now the hard part - I am still sitting on the remainder of the funds from the collection that were to be forwarded on to her as & when the photos & thank you thread were posted, both myself Dennis & Matt agreed it would be best for it to be sent on afterwards as a second wind shocker surprise to really put the icing on the cake, the thank you thread eventually happened after some push & shove but it seemed hollow & the photo update never happened, so out of the funds we decided to send on the postage cost from the states of the laptop to the guy who sent it at his own expense so he was covered & I have been trying to find a nice MOC to do as a give-away for the members who donated as a little thank you & to give something back - well it will no longer be a surprise but it will still end up with at least one of the detonators being out of pocket & maybe even someone getting something out of this & actually appreciating it, so some good will come from this mess (I hope).
I plan to (when I have the item in hand) put all the names (numbers for the order they donated in) in to a random number generator & give the item to the lucky winner, its taken some time to find an item of the quality I was hoping to get for the money & I am having it graded before being sent & all postage costs will be covered, just a **** that its come out like this rather than it happening spontaneously.
We were at a bit of a loss as what was best to do with the remaining amount as we did not want it sent to Deborah till the never forthcoming photos appeared & were then in a quandary as what was the best thing to do with the funds - donate to a charity, try to divide up evenly & send back to the detonators (would have been a pittance divided between almost 50 members) so we thought this was the best way forward, I know it won't please everyone in question, but I hope it will please most.
Final thought - bored & disappointed
EDIT - this is what was also sent on as well as the toys -
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