Although I don't mind a spot of hyperbole in the kibitzing, I tend modesty (and accuracy) in the "official" section.

I'm bouncing around doing the name stuff at the moment and bounced over here. I finally looked at the wiki source ('cause if you do claim a 'the' <best> extremum, it should be sourced after all), and here is what it said:

<It was reputed that he owned the largest known private chess library in the world,[3]>

Anyways, I looked into this a little more, and discovered that Oxford Companion (1e) did make an absolute statement in regards to L. Schmid's library:

<A collector of chess paraphernalia and books, he has the largest private chess library in the world>

Last sentence in his entry, from the 1984 (1e p297-298 hbk) Hooper and Whyld book.

The gist, without the diplomacy, was that a large percentage of the collection was junk, and that the truly valuable parts, which he did not deny, could be confined to one room.

I once knew a man with an extensive, and fine, collection of LP's - including many original pressings. This was an individual who had actually heard Charlie Parker perform live. He well knew jazz, and could write well about it as well.

But his days were drawing down, and he wondered what he should do with his collection. Since he had no close relatives who knew the value of such records, I advised him to liquidate all but his most favorite recordings. That way, he would benefit his beloved wife the most; both by relieving her of a job she was unqualified for, and by maximizing the financial return on his collection. He didn't know the business end at first, but he had both the brains and the music knowledge to learn very quickly.

It turns out that he really didn't need my advice, since he had basically already decided the same. But he was surprised to realize that selling his collection piecemeal to different dealers offered the better return than selling it as a complete package to one dealer. That, despite the fact that the majority of his collection was essentially non-convertible, and ended up being donated to a local library.

(His original pressings of Blue Note records were the most valuable)

His wife would never have the patience to do all the work necessary to sort out the collection, and would have squandered the most valuable by selling the entire lot as a unit. Even if properly inventoried.

Of course it was sad for him to sell off such a fine collection. But he did have fun making the many trips to the various record dealers throughout the city.

I can find https://www.teleschach.de/historie/....

But please use correction slips next time.

You see when it was made, by who, and what it was - in full detail.

It would be nice to find a way to automate a correction slip submission via a comment post.

It would also be nice to document, in the comment stream or via a history list, the changes made to a game.