Stan chimes in -- as of this morning (my timepiece says 12:14 a.m.) there are 18 "unclaimed" 2017 miniatures.
As to the newsletter -- I have a unique perspective on it since I've been the editor since 2000. I took it on because I figured it would be good to have a hobby in "retirement" & I knew a bit about wrench collecting & wrenches due to dad's interest. I could never have imagined that taking on the newsletter would lead into patent research, DATAMP participation, etc. & that so many research skills I learned as a librarian would be so valuable in this endeavor.
One major challenge for the newsletter is locating information in the mass of back issues. I maintain a personal "index" of sorts that exists as an Open Office spreadsheet with over 30 data "columns" (one column tracks appearances in the MVWC Newsletters -- other columns track patent numbers, appearances in books, sales results, etc. ) and currently in excess of 34,000 "rows." At the beginning it was tracking individual sales from auction lots, eBay, etc. so there is massive duplication of data. This mass can be searched by "character string" which could be the digits of a patent number, an inventor's name, or the string of numbers on the upper corners of MVWC Newsletter pages that uniquely identify each page. This spreadsheet is no where near complete in tracking information in past MVWC Newsletter pages, but I keep working on it. I also have scribbled notes in my personal copy of the MVWC Newsletter back issues.