Good evening! <snipped> >I tried to get a friendlier price
Would you mind to share with us what the unfriendly price was?
It was Claes if I have not become senil since yesterday
Have looked at the pictures and it really lookes nice! I do not want to place any opinion wether it is the real thing or not, lets say until you have gotten it checked out that it is what it appears to be!
Like I wrote to you in the E-mail, there is nothing as far as I know that indicates that it should be anything other, just that it is one of those 'too good to be true' events that one can see from time to time on the Antiques Roadshow. Enough of that, I went into a pair of antiqariats (sp)? today to see if anyone knew anything about the Arte et Artre by Stig Lindberg you wrote about and in the last shop the owner said that he had a faint memory of something in that way. He did not have it in his records but if I get the chance I will go down to the Royal Library as soon as possible, they have complete records of everything published here.
'The government' works at Kammarkollegiet whos closest neighbour is The house of Nobles here in Stockholm. They have moved the archives that they had there earlier to Riksarkivet, but there are some folks there that knows what archives too look into if one wants to dig deeper into the history surrounding a document of this kind. The War archives f.ex. There are some things that I want to have a second look at, the coat of arms f.inst.
Karl XII was born June 17;th 1682 in Stockholm and died 30;th November at Fredrikshald in Norway1718. He is sometimes referred to as the Warrior King or the Hero King and has been like no other Swedish King (IMO at least) subject to interest of sometimes mythological proportions.
Gerhard Hopken is not a Swedish name, where he came from can be written down on the document itself, can you see anything in that way? 1707 Karl XII was down in Poland and the area that later became Germany, Altranstadt is marked on a map I have, it is (was)? located somewhere halfway between Warsaw and the Atlantic Coast. There was a peice settled there 1706 and it was common at such occasions to reward the ones who deserved it with for inst. with a title, or how you put it in English.
Finally, I am missing around 50% of all messages so maybe Claes or someone else have already provided you with all the info you want, so if you would like me to stop blabbering just let me know. Although I would be happy to dig into this a little bit deeper, it is, how do you say, a real 'cliffhang'?
Very Best Regards Martin W.
PS; As a comment to the previous discussion about what can be called an antique and what can not, I never use that word myself, but if I would have to give an example: IMO a document of this kind qualifyes in every respect for that label and the monetary value have nothing to do with it.
