I happily scored on a superblaireau auction also. I noticed a couple of other familiar names entered on various goodies he had offered. The cryptic description stating "origin: the Caro collection" had me a-wonderin' so I queiried Mr. Serge Nakkachian of France for some further info and received this reply:

Subj: Re: eBay Caro Collection
Date: 06/05/2002 2:42:19 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: nakka@noos.fr (Serge Nakkachian)
Reply-to: nakka@noos.fr
To: Mtanker@aol.com

the collection is an addition of samples of their products , kept by Caro
throughout the ages, plus numberless samples sent by other manufacturers of the
world. I could only buy a part of all ; Mrs Caro, has also sent many to be
destroyed, despite her son's opinion, & mine.
Serge

Nice little chapter in the history of the pieces that survived the pitiless Madame Caro! I wondered if there was going to be a connection between Caro and Chipco but perhaps it was only professional consideration. Further Caro facts posted by Carlos Pascoal http://www.thechipboard.com/cgi-bin/tcb/tcb.pl?read=199060