Tuesday, March 15, 2016
First up on the ballot today we have an excellent US Army Air Force wool jacket from an estate. The mannequin and outdoor lighting really catches the eye. You can also find a great tankers helmet that has 33 bids already and is ending soon.
Maybe it won't surprise you to learn that since the time I build this newsletter that the German hat pictured below has been removed. I guess that happens all the time in this category.
I'm not into Russian medals but the Order of Lenin pictured below already has bids over $1000 so it's worth paying attention to.
Click to see what the best items in the WWI category are as determined by bidding action. You can find several swords and even an early gas mask listed.
Thursday, March 10, 2016
There are some auctions today that remind me of the hazards that pilots would have faced during the war. If mechanical trouble or enemy efforts forced the pilot to abort over foreign lands then the blood chit (one listed below) would have been used to try and communicate with the civilian population to render aid.
Some of us are getting kinda spoiled when it comes to navigating in the car. I have sometimes found myself turning on the GPS on a trip even when I don't need directions to keep up with how many miles to go. So with the German pilot's navigation map bag below it struck me what an incredible challenge it would be to navigate over the horizon in a propeller driven airplane in a war time environment.
I heard an interesting story on the radio last night that the United States was assisting the Russians in recovering important and historical documents that were stolen during the chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union. I wonder if they give out medals for that too?
My 7th graders have really enjoyed studying WWI but now it's time for us to move on. Every time I put together this block I'm reminded of some of the events we studied in that unit.
Monday, March 7, 2016
The United States category is the largest of them all. That might be because as the big boy it does attract some listings that probably don't belong there. But either way diving in to this batch of thousands of auctions my job is to pull out maybe 15-20 that are at the top of the field.
The German block contains almost a dozen of the top auctions in that category that have bids and are endings soon. Ever since I started writing this newsletter I've only featured listings with bids because that is how I know the pricing is realistic and it's going to sell.
The final round up of WWII listings includes items from the U.K, Russia, Japan, and other countries that took part in the war.
My 7th graders have been studying WWI so seeing the naval demonstration ships below was cool. We studied the Battle of Jutland as an example of how the new technologies of war collided at the turn of the century.