Chesterman 100-foot engineer's link chain from Charles R. Swart estate

Offered here is a Chesterman 100-foot engineer's link chain from the estate of Mr. Charles R. Swart. This chain was manufactured by James Chesterman & Company in Sheffield, England.

I do not know how to establish the age of Chesterman chains, but James Chesterman & Company merged with John Rabone and Sons in 1963, at which time the name was changed to Rabone Chesterman. So this chain predates the 1963 merger making it at least 50 years old and possibly considerably older.

This is one of the five items featured in the thread I started on Monday 11 April. Having separate threads for each item will be easier those interested to follow the item and to keep track of offers as they come in. Therefore, this thread will replace that earlier thread for purposes of this chain.

A while back I offered to help Charles' widow dispose of several survey-related items that Charles had accumulated through the decades. I am doing this simply as a favor to Mrs. Swart.

Charles Swart was the founding president of the Montana Association of Registered Land Surveyors and had land-surveying practices both in Bozeman, Montana and San Marcos, Texas. Kent McMillan mentioned his colleague and friend Charles in several posts to this forum; you can find those threads using the search function.

Charles' web site is still available at www.landsurveyor.info. Among the articles on that site is a particularly interesting history of the establishment of the initial point of the Principal Meridian of Montana.

Rather than burn up a lot of Wendell's bandwidth on this forum, I have posted a detailed description and two large images of this chain on one of my download sites.

I used quite a bit of effort and research time in an attempt to make the description complete and the images informative, but if you have questions beyond what I provided please post to this thread or send me a message via this forum's message system.

To access the description, images, and other related information, please point your web browser to
http://inlandwyo.com/inlandwyo/pub/Charles%20Swart%20Items/03%20Chesterman%20100-foot%20link%20chain/

The file named "03 Index - Chesterman 100-foot link chain.pdf" contains the description of the chain as well as an index to the two JPG image files found in the same folder.

Similar Chesterman 100-foot link chains have sold on eBay for as much as $300 earlier this year.

As of this posting we have a $150 offer from "sek-surveyor" for this chain.

Please post your offer to this thread unless you wish to make a private offer, in which case you can send me your offer in a message via this forum's message system. I will then post your offer in the thread without revealing your name.

To facilitate the process, let's use the following minimum offer increments:
-If the previous high offer is from $0 to $99, the next offer must be at least $10 higher than the previous high offer or an even $100, whichever is lower

-If the previous high offer is from $100 to $499, the next offer must be at least $25 higher than the previous high offer or an even $500, whichever is lower

-If the previous high offer is from $500 to $999, the next offer must be at least $50 higher than the previous high offer or an even $1,000, whichever is lower

-If the previous high offer is from $1,000 to $1,999, the next offer must be at least $100 higher than the previous high offer or an even $2,000, whichever is lower

-If the previous high offer is from $ 2,000 to $4,999, the next offer must be at least $250 higher than the previous high offer or an even $5,000, whichever is lower

-If the previous high offer is from $5,000 to $9,999, the next offer must be at least $500 higher than the previous high offer or an even $10,000, whichever is lower

So the next offer for this chain will need to be at least $175 but there is no upper limit if you would like to offer any amount higher than $175.

We have not set a closing date/time for this item. We will let any new highest offer stand for at least 24 hours from the time it is posted to this thread before accepting that offer. That way others interested in the item and following this thread will have ample opportunity to submit a new higher offer.

Mrs. Swart and I thank you for your interest!

GB