Dear Lee,

Our editor, Nancy Saada, is retiring. We will miss her terribly, but we envy her, too. She is leaving on a month-long trip to India and planning other exotic adventures. She has worked on the newsletter almost since its first issue, choosing subjects, writing and editing articles, and adding her careful and intelligent touch to every page. We will miss her as a friend we saw every day and as a skilled editor. She wrote this note for all of her readers and coworkers:

Dear Friends,

Ralph and Terry Kovel have given me the privilege of working on this newsletter for 31 years. Now it’s time for me to retire. I’d like to thank them and all the members of their staff who work so hard to make this a quality publication. And I also want to say goodbye to you, our loyal readers. Over the years, we have gone from typewriter to word processor to computer and from black and white to color. Last year we added a digital edition. Many of the collectibles we write about have changed, and so have their prices-one of the first articles I worked on was about an auction of rare decoys at Sotheby’s that ended, “Prices started at $50 and half sold for below $200.” Amazing.

The Kovels provide the inspiration and much of the content for every newsletter. Marcia Goldberg, who has worked with me for many years as associate editor, will move into my job as editor. I want to thank her and the others who work hard on every issue, including Karen Kneisley, photo editor; Cherrie Smrekar, copy editor; Jeff Clark, graphic designer; Gay Hunter, Grace DeFrancisco, and everyone else listed on the masthead at the bottom of this page. Their work will continue to make the newsletter a first-class publication. My thanks to them all, and especially to Ralph and Terry.