Bigger is not better

I ENVY people who collect stuff like coins, stamps, thimbles, arrowheads, bullets or small figures. They take up so little room. If I could rewire my brain I would be sure to do so to make me want to collect SMALL items.

Sadly, I have far too many BIG items. You could fit a major collection of coins in the same space it takes to put just one field desk, chaplain's organ, switchboard, mine detector case, foot locker, or any other number of BIG items I have. My collection has a life of its own now. I look at things like houses not thinking are the schools any good, but can it fit my stuff?

And of course if I were to sell them the market is limited as shipping is a pain. I was only able to sell off a second field organ once because I was driving down that way and could drop it off.

So yeah, it's impressive. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, I can dig it out and do great displays with it. But it is a pain in the ass.

So my advice is to try very very hard, to try and only collect in a field where the biggest object you might ever buy is no more than the size of an average book. Stay away from anything that has related items that 'might' fit into your collection as it is a sure thing you will start running into them at a good price and suddenly start thinking in terms of how many cubic yards does your collection take up.

How to stop collecting

temporary solution: have migraines.

Big Important Collecting Rule # 4

Books drive up prices. Always. You can collect widgets for 25 years and no one will care about them, but eventually someone will write a book about them. The book can be pure crap (and normally is) in which they just show photos of their collection of widgets. But the value of those widgets will then go up as “there is a book about them.”

This is actually how lunchbox collecting started. Some guy started buying them up cheap. OK, lunch boxes are cool. I miss my old ones. But no one cared about them really until he wrote a book showing photos of the lunchboxes he had picked up. Then WNGO! They became a hot collectible, he sold his collection and made a killing, and I have no idea what he is doing now. In fact I once read a “how to make money in the collectibles market” in which they suggested the best way to make money was to find a cheap item no one had discovered, buy them all up, then do a book, and sell your collection off at a high price.

Oh, did I mention these books always have a “price guide” in which the author tells you what they are worth. I wish I could set my own prices, especially if I had a dozen examples… Some more reasonable authors refuse to put down prices, but just provide a “rarity index” which is close but at least not as mercenary.

Now you may laugh but this is true. I’ve seen it happen a few times. Some silly thing you find at most flea markets or yard sales for cheap suddenly zooms up and you can’t find them anymore. In all probability a book had been done on them.

Last month I started looking for a (not rare) early version of the M1910 Army canteen with a flat top. I asked a dealer I know who normally has a few of them if he had any and the cost. He told me that he had none, and that last year he would have said maybe $40, but all of a sudden they were going for $150-200 on ebay. And then he said “someone must have written a book.” And in fact someone had. In fact it wasn’t even a very good book. Just photos and rough information on various models. No digging into the archives for reasons why changes were made, or specification drawings or anything. Just a bare bones book that happens to point out that a certain version exsists. Suddenly everyone must own it!

So if you really love a collectible, pray very hard that no one does a book about them. Or make sure that you beat them to it.

Gold and SIlver

The price of Gold and Silver are up very high.

What this means is that lots and lots of very nice items are going to be sold off as scrap and melted down. Its a shame. I hope the darn scrap metal merchants know to have some experts look things over before they do the met. Last time this happened huge numbers of WW2 flight wings vanished forever.

But A funny story- at a show one day A dealer I knew pretty well had a pile of WW2 Dr's insignia. I was looking at them thinking maybe I should buy a set and put them away in case I ever needed them (needed them ! hah!)

And one of them looked different. thinner, finer made. I looked at it and - ahem- it was gold. A gold Medical Caduceus! Had I been a different kind of guy I would have snatched it up for whatever- $5. But I actually pointed it out to the dealer who was very very happy I did.

I learned to always look at batches of insignia very very carefully, but I've never found any more gold....

Collecting Medals 101

Medal collectors tend to be a slightly different breed than generic militaria collectors. Don't ask me why, but perhaps it has to do with there being only a small step from the established coin collecting hobby to medals and decorations.

In any case, instead of reinvent the wheel I suggest you check out the medal collecting society's guide to medal collecting at http://www.omsa.org/forums/collecting101.php

I actually kind of envy people like this, that have such a narrowly defined area of collecting.

And again, here is a good lesson. When I started collecting militaria I 'could' have picked up a few decent, identified wartime medals. But no, I went for some generic un-identified ones. Even just some modern ones as examples. They are now worth what I paid for them (or less). Had I spent a but more and gotten decent good quality ones, they would be worth far More- and thus are now a lot harder to get (and you have to deal with many more fakes).