Side caps and helmets are great to collect and close to the price point of visor caps. Stick with it, but be patient - They are becoming very hard to find with many repros circulating. Do your homework and don't make any quick decisions - I was lucky enough to buy these both in-person so I could check out all the important features myself
Scammers, prices, and crappy repros are all killing military collecting. I hope it gets better for the younger people who still want to collect and reenact.
in europe it is already dead in many countries because it is illegal to trade in nazi items by law... even world war 2 german stamps are no longer publicly traded because of this law.
since the 1980s and speaking from personal experience, nothing really changes. Everything as adjusted for inflation, all prices have kept steadily in pace with inflation. If you think things are "expensive," everything has always been expensive. The market rules and speaks the truth. God Bless your pops because he is smiling down from heaven that you are appreciating the stuff that he loved. Buy the best and buy what you like. We are just care takers of history. God bless!
So you're telling me the 18 - to mid late twenty's really care about this stuff? Look at them... trying to deface monuments, free Palestine. They would burn this stuff on social media, let alone paying thousands of dollars for something
Good evening , u certainly have a beautiful array of military edge pieces . Those blues , and plums are beautiful. I would like to know if any are 4 sale ? Thanks . Victor .
I wish i could of kept going collecting WW2 Germany relics but 80% of stuff are fakes you go to a war relics show bring your relics identifying books, i couldn't believe how much stuff wasn't real, then the ss stuff is highly priced so it's not worth it.
European colector here No its not going to die since there is a lot of demand worldwide but the prices of items are crazy... last 10 years its going up more then gold so people see it as an investment also... Im 35 and my grandfather was a fighter pilot in ww2, so the topic of ww2 was around as far as I can remember, I even managed to infect my wife with it... Geopoliticaly the topic is still hot because as we all can see - the topic was never adressed properly and now we have what we have
I'm sorry for youngsters interested in this hobby. I'm 56 and a member of a collecting and researching organization. I'm at the point that I'm almost completely uninterested in anything to do with Third Reich stuff because of the sheer greed that affects the hobby. Which results in batshitcrazy prices for anything with a swastika on it and a staggering industry of fakes and forgeries. Fifty years ago it might have been better but now if you are starting out you are competing against boomers who made their money (lots of it) in past times and a different world and have happily pushed prices to stratospherically stupid levels. Even if I had the money I don't think I'd be prepared to pay it. And this now permeates every aspect of German collecting, even Imperial and stuff going back to the early 1800's. And not just German. It also applies to a lot of British victorian era stuff which is also a major interest of mine. Basically. If theres money to be made with this stuff it will be faked and the fakes are now so good I no longer put much faith in the authoritiy of "experts" on the subject. Sad but I don't see any realistic way for things to get better.
My little brother did re enactment years ago. I had a Iron cross that I gave to a friend of his to give to him. He never got it, and I never saw that creep again to find out what happened to it. It peeves me that I bought it with money I didnt really have and wanted my brother to have it, and some shmuck took it!
Garbage, LOL no these items have significant value, your father would be proud that you have kept his passion alive. I've been involved since childhood, but don't share that passion to collect. Will, perhaps you can travel to the Max show in Sept. If I was you, I would not collect Nazi items, the market is flooded with reproductions, get a blue light to inspect anything fabric. I would have the Infantry office cap looked at, I question if it's authentic. The white color band at the top noting infantry is far to wide and the eagle looks incorrect.
Outstanding M1 Carbine, who would think that a company that made typewriters would make military rifles but that was the war effort. My Wifes mother worked at the Springfield Armory in the war years and worked on M1 Garands, we still have some blueprints of the Garand that she gave us. Is the luger all matching? My Dad was a WW2 combat vet and took an artillery model luger off of a German officer, some other GI liked it more and stole it from him. My jaw dropped when he told me, those are pretty expensive now.
As a dealer/collector I see people taking repro's and aging them. This hurts collecting more than anything. Repros should say repro stamped in! To stop this.
Lots of the repros were featured in books that were written to validate the repros they were pumping out. I know of a collector that would take a standard stalenhelm and modify it, camo chicken wire new stickers sand treatment he had a factory line..
I use to collect in the 70s and 80s when you could find good stuff at flea markets, garage sales and the penny packet(not sure if thats the correct name, it was a newspaper that was ads to sell anything)..when you would go hunting for items you were limited to what was in your area or word of mouth..I have a WW1 US uniform that i bought at a garage sale in the late 70s or early 80s from the man who wore it, no joke..Today you have Ebay and all kinds of sites selling..what drove up prices in my opinion is the internet you have heavy hitters driving the price up setting the the new price..But the great thing about the internet is you can now do great research on items and can maybe not get fooled by fakes..
Great video, clear and good communication, I find there's 2 types of k98 bayonets 1st one had a wooden handle, 2nd had the backalike plastic handle hope the information helps I ground dug my k98 bayonets in the ardennes, where the battle of the bulge took place near Belgium happy hunting 🎉🎉🎉
Ive seen those postcards before, definitely original and beautiful pieces. Good luck finding a pair of hangers I see them all the time in the $100 range so shouldn’t be too much of a hassle
Beautiful collection, Im 19 and started from scratch collecting about 13 or 14. Its definitely been hard to be buy the pieces im more interested in but I have learned overtime its better to put more time into research so you know what to look for and keep yourself from getting burned. Also I rarely buy things over the internet and keep most my of my purchases to in person at military shows or antique shops this has allowed me to be able to look over the item and get some amazing deals I wouldn’t get anywhere else especially on armbands and helmets. Some of the stuff I have bought is selling for 3x the price online its crazy plus they charge tax and shipping. I love dealing with vets the most because they are often able to tell me how they acquired the item or the story behind it. They also don’t mind helping out a younger generation collector by throwing in a thing or two. I have had very positive experiences with this community and my passion has only grown since then. I look forward to be able to helping the future generations out one day and teaching them to love this hobby!
Very encouraging. I myself have got 20 or so antique helmets from all over the world as well as a fair amount of entry level surplus as well as some relics I've found here in Hawaii. In fact, I use an old mess tin spoon I dug up for breakfast. I'm very young btw, not even 30.
Your Father gave you an excellent start. Did he have reference books? Some of the older Angolia, Davis and Littlejohn books are very good and how I started in the 1970's. My Grandfather and Great Uncle were members of the Wehrmacht on my mother's side. Luckily as fate would have it one of my teachers at school was a major collector (we are friends to this day) and that got me started, along with a good part-time job. It was the "glory days" of gun shows back then. When stationed in West Germany in the early 1980's I tapped into that market which was just coming out of its "stigma" stage, albeit every Sastika was covered (usually with a price tag). I got a Luft cap at a flea market in Fulda with the eagle removed and tucked in the lining (that sort of thing). Great video, I'll be watching and "Allons" 👍
