They Have Played a Seaside Shell Game for the Last 35 Years

“Now this,” said Jim Beattie, 86, who has been selling seashells by the seashore in Newport Beach for 35 years, “is a rare Cowrie Valenti. It sells for around $2,000.”

And he should know. “There aren’t many conchologists like me left in the world,” said Beattie, who may be one of the leading seashell authorities around. “That’s one of the reasons you don’t see many people opening up seashell stores any more. They just don’t have the knowledge to do it.”

Although he has expensive shells, Beattie said, “I have some that only cost a nickel.”

He also said oceans are getting so polluted that mollusks and shells are already in short supply. “Although we still get shells in this country, most of the shells are imported,” he said. “And a lot of those countries already restrict exports.”

Beattie is a former Alaskan fisherman who studied marine science at Fairbanks College and later became a hospital nurse during World War II alongside his wife, Helen, 75. He said it took a chance stroll along the Newport Beach seafront to stake his claim on the Pacific Sea Shell Store.

“The guy who owned it really didn’t like what he was doing, so he sold it to me,” he said. The price was about $1,500.

The store has provided the Beatties with a good living for years, especially through sales to collectors. Although he sells lots of shells to tourists, “the real money is in the back room,” where collectors search through boxes for special specimens, he said. He also sells shells to museums.

“There are about 250,000 collectors out there,” he said, adding that Japan and Europe have the most collectors.

But the fun at the store comes from tourists, said Helen Beattie, a retired registered nurse who has no plans to move or retire again. “We’ll stay here,” she said.

Her husband, she added, “is the technician. I just like the common pretty shells.”

And she likes the tourists, especially children: “Sometimes they come in here and buy something but don’t figure on the tax, but I sell it to them anyway. And you know, they always come back to pay the tax.”

Besides dealing with collectors, Jim has also become a resource authority to thousands of Orange County students studying marine sciences. “I like helping young people,” he said. The Beatties have two children.

“This is just a little shop, but it gives both of us something to do,” he said. “We enjoy it, and it’s better than working in a hospital. I never did enjoy working as a nurse.”

Even though earning the Eagle Scout award represents years of hard work to earn merit badges, it’s not all that unusual in Boy Scout Troop 1201 in Fullerton.

Brian Lochrie, 17, of Anaheim is the 26th Scout from the troop to receive the award.

His community project for a Scout’s highest honor consisted of devising and building a winding trail at the highest peak at Fullerton Arboretum.

Although the trail was built primarily to accommodate disabled visitors, Lochrie said, it isn’t confined to a certain group, noting everyone can use and benefit from the pathway.

The tennis finals Aug. 2 at John Wayne Tennis Club in Newport Beach are named “Serve Love.”

Carl Harvey School student Isaac Lopez, 10, of Santa Ana was named 1987 Ambassador for the Orange County United Cerebral Palsy Foundation.

They used to be called poster children, but the foundation said the child is truly an ambassador and more than just a face on the poster.

John Morgan of Huntington Beach is a whole team. He entered 10 swimming events in the recent Assn. for Blind Athletes national championships in Albuquerque and won all of them.

The UC Irvine student also set world records among the blind for the 50- and 100-meter freestyle races, 100-meter butterfly and 200-meter breaststroke.

He also won the 200-, 400- and 800-meter freestyle, 100-meter breaststroke and 200- and 400-meter individual medley races.

Acknowledgments--Sharon Kaplan of Tustin, who conducts local and national seminars for clinics on adoption issues and prevention of child abuse, was named 1987 Child Advocate of the Year by the Child Abuse Council of Orange County. . . . Axel Lopez, 14, and Phong Le, 16, both of Santa Ana, took first and second, respectively, in the boys’ junior division at the Far West National Wheelchair Tennis Championships in Reno.