Last November Paul Greaves and I worked a pole sight in the mother load country that once had M-2998's. These 14" wide porcelain parasols remain one of the most elusive collectable multi parts... In fact this is the FIRST one I have personally recovered from the wild that was complete enough to display . Paul found a good repairable one back in 1998 or so but since then our luck has been totally dry on these till now . M-2998's were only produced in early mid 1902 and became obsolete within months of there production . Do to there very fragile large size almost none have survived intact making them a very highly sought after piece... This was the first really large porcelain (or glass) insulator to appear in any catalogue anywhere on earth making it a rather historically significant piece as well . We recovered two partial tops and one repairable complete base skirt from the pole sight where this was found . Just yesterday I went back for several hours re-raked the ground, finding one really key piece of the platter making it possible to restore the specimen. There is still one 2" piece of the rim missing but that can be recreated if necessary. Hopefully Paul and I will be able to recover the parts of the other top and this one's rim in the future. This one died in a forest fire and the pieces were scattered down hill requiring four or five hours of raking and brush cutting through poison oak and small shrubs ... It pays to be thorough kids!