Good to be me

It's good to be me, especially since I've got some seriously cool hookups. Matt Vavreck is currently in Lebanon doing some research for Dr. Chatterton. While there, he's doing a little shoping for me. I'm not quite sure what I'm getting, but its between several varieties of Cretaceous age fossil fish. Apparently, I could get some small ones for $5 each or bigger ones for more. I might even get a cretaceous ray (now if only I could remember the name of the Alberta variety so I could do some comparison, beggins with an M,I think).
Meanwhile elsewhere in the Middle East (Morocco) Stacey Gibb (also doing research for Dr. Chatterton) has money from me specifically for some dinosaur material and an enormous Trilobite.
I'd personally rather be doing this shopping my self but it's nice to be able to get the local price discount on otherwise expensive fossils. A great example of just such a discount is something I happened upon just the other day. I was walking around town (window shopping without the intention to buy) when I spied a couple of fossil turtles from the White River formation. A smaller one (about 10 inches long and 6 inches wide) was missing the majority of the carapase (showing just the endocast) and the plastron was obscured by matrix. The larger one (12 inches by 7 inches) still has about half of its carapase (also showing an endocast where shell is missing) and the plastron is once again obscured by matrix. Normally, If I were to buy this from a retailer in California who knows anything about fossils, I would be charge about $100-$150 for the better one. I bought it from a shop that had a couple of fossils (but mostly used books) for a grand total of $35, plus tax. Now I have a project in cleaning it up. I particularly like it because if reminds me of when I was a kid and I preped the same Oreodon skull (from the same formation) for 5 years (I'm alot faster now).