Say hello to my little friend...

Hello again readers!

There are some pretty exciting things happening on the Manion's militaria front, but I would be remiss making a post on this date without mentioning the attack on the World Trade Center that happened on this date seven years ago. Seven years ago today a turbulent storm began to take place - a storm that started in NYC and today is fiercely pounding areas in the Middle East.

Whether the Government of the US is right or wrong on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, one thing can be taken from this: an attack on the United States will be met with serious hell to pay by someone somewhere.

Anyway, click here and listen to a story or two in memory of all who died on that fateful day - Story Corps.

Speaking of hell to pay...

Check out this M-1934 25 mm Hotchkiss Anti-Tank gun we will soon be offering for sale on the website. Not exactly sure of the details at this point, but continue to check back for more information - but for now check out these pics, and check out the muscles on John Conway!



































































Check out this other big gun we will have on the auction in the near future. It is an oversize Thompson Submachine Gun. Appears to be a manufacturer promotion piece of some kind. I haven't done any investigation, but at first glance that would be my guess (but firearms are not really my forte). We're waiting to see if we come up with a couple of more parts before we take it live - but I always like to give readers of Manion's Collecting News an "advance showing" of things we will soon have on the militaria auction website. Note the size of the baseball bat underneath for reference.
















Don't worry WWII German collectors, I haven't forgotten about you. Check out this collection of helmets that just came in. I believe this guy was a big collector in the 60s and 70s in the Chicago area who fairly recently passed away and the family chose Manion's to sell his military collection. These helmets, swords, and Panzer uniform are but a small portion of what we have - something tells me these will be up on the site sooner than later...

Militaria Collecting - Worlds Collide

I suppose a few of the readers here may have been following the recent visor cap discussion on the German WWII collecting and history message forum - Wehrmacht-Awards.com. For those who haven't, here's a brief rundown:

A few rare WWII German visor caps we had on the auction a couple of days ago. They were called out as essentially, "fakes" by some well-known forum visor cap gurus for being "re-built" and I instantly paid heed. Long story short, we took them down from the auction, looked at them again and have decided to either return them to the consignor or re-run them as what they are.

In dealing with all this, I made an interesting observation: WWII German collectors, and it applies to collectors of items from all time periods and countries, are of two schools - old school and new school.

You see, the old school fellas see a visor cap having a replaced piece of paste-board, or some holes in the lining, or some other evidence of someone messing with it as no big deal. In the earlier days of collecting militaria, a guy was just glad to get a good example - he didn't cared if it had been "messed with" as long as it was done as close to the original as it could be. Yes, many times there is criminal intent (you know who you are) but many of these pieces have been reconstructed with patience and attention to detail, not in an attempt to deceive - but in an attempt to preserve history.

This lead me to think of how few truly original items are even out there - visor caps and uniforms anyway - heck, even medals and other pieces. When did they start making "fakes"? I believe it was in 1945...

In addition, so much of what GIs brought back had to be denazified - the old school guys lived to find a breast badge, collar tab, or other piece of insignia and put it back together with original pieces. Does this make it "fake" - even when each piece holds significant value on its own?

There is a newer group of collector, the new school. These guys are tracking it all down, trying to find all of the original stuff: all the stuff that originally came back to the states in footlockers, crates sealed for 60 years, and in cedar chests and just brought out for special occasions when starry eyed children listened to their Grandfather's tales of Europe and the Pacific fighting the Germans and Japanese.

To the new school, a sweatband from one manufacturer professionally sewn in a period manner to another type of visor is criminal intent - back in the day, they were just happy to have an example. If you have a visor cap with a rotten headband, do you just throw it away or do you restore it?

Since selling items on the Internet does not afford the buyer the luxury of inspecting the item first-hand, and even the thousand words pictures offer could never suffice, Manion's offers a very generous guarantee. In addition, anyone would ever like more pictures of an item, or would like to express questions or concerns - we will respond by telephone or e-mails.

Sometimes we do get items returned, but the VAST majority do not. One thing old school and new school can agree on is you can never do enough research in your area of interest. These old school fellas have been looking at all of this stuff since the new school was in grade school; they have years of hands on experience under their collective belts. The new school guys will never know the pleasure of popping open a vet's footlocker and hearing the stories one on one - at least not to the extent of their old school associates. Unfortunately, more old school guys do not take advantage of the Internet. There is such a plethora of information: detailed descriptions, photos larger than a book could ever hold, and dialog - often in real time - with collectors around the world.

In many ways, the Internet is to the new school as the freshly cracked footlocker was to the old - both must work together for the militaria collecting hobby to flourish.