Wonderful post and do enjoy the pleasures of winter. Thanks for your fine role with us.
Wonderful post and do enjoy the pleasures of winter. Thanks for your fine role with us.
Very good responses from FB and Bob. I cannot refute any remarks made. They are spot on. My point is, is that the fakers are advancing in their methods and techniques. I always rely on the forums for my purchases, because we look out for each other. You guys are my friends! What concerns me is that in the past few years is the improvements in these fakes. I must stick to my guns that this could effect prices. I must admit that in my day to day life i am a man of finance. I am obsessed with the stock market and playing its games--- doing the capitalist grind . It has been a love of mine since i was a young kid. I collect as a passion and also as another investment hedge. That's just my nature. I have been on here for years and have not talked much of what i do.
Not all collectors have the dough to drop huge bucks on pieces. It is these collectors who support the collectibles market in a big way, because some do save money for those big purchases. It all adds up in the big picture. Collectors and dealers set the prices on this market. If doubt enters from the way of museum quality knock-offs then the market corrects. Most all collectors i know, including myself, love the chase, hunt, and acquisition. However, we do not want to lose our asses outright from a devaluation of such collectibles. There is nothing wrong with a person wanting their possessions to retail value or even appreciate. Passion and economics go hand in hand in most all of our endeavors to find genuine pieces.
Octavian-
There no longer exist craftsmen who can perfectly reproduce a visor cap made in the 3rd Reich era. A serious collector needs to know the weaknesses of fraudulent items..
when the Jim Atwood fake daggers hit the market in the late 60's and early 70's there was similar thoughts of doom and gloom. However, serious collectors were able to find the errors in his junk daggers and soon the prices once again went up. Back at that time, an early SA with all the leather could be purchased for $35-$40. I understand your concerns but as long as we have serious collectors, the market will remain stable.
BOB
LIFE'S LOSERS NEVER LEARN FROM THE ERROR OF THEIR WAYS.
I always enjoy reading the well written words of thoughtful caring collectors , who give their valuable time and energy to this site . I feel a kinship with many here , people who share the same passion for a bygone age . People who get excited over a old piece of wool or cloth with some thread sewn to it correctly . I feel somewhat of a voyeur here , as I don't purchase much TR myself these days , but do so love to see the treasures that others have uncovered . Thank you all for your time shared here with all of us . Cheers and Merry Christmas
Always a pleasure to leaf through the varying opinions on this dreadful topic. It's evident this very same discussion permeates across the spectrum of all forms of collecting. Personally, I tend to share the same opinion as that of Mr. octavian - yet remain hopeful for the outcome that FB and Mr. Coleman predict.
Well, a serious bloodletting in the SS market would certainly benefit guys like me, but I don't see it happening.
I think the fakes don't fool anyone, but fools...
If anything, a glut of fakes are only going to make the real ones more dear.
There is a point of pride in having real items in a sea of fakes, for me anyway.
by octavian
This is my last comment on what otherwise is a theme that is too common on all these sites, and goes in a circle.
a.) SS regalia is not stock shares in Apple or Walmart. These things are fundamentally different, although their value varies by
dint of economics as well as collective psychology. The latter is a startling new discovery to certain economists, but not to
historians (I am a professional historian) and collective psychology is not rational. SS regalia has been the subject also of
an irrational exuberance, but it remains very rare and the object of demand that I see only growing, even if many middle class people
in the US or western Europe cannot afford these things. Others can and do buy them on a global scale.
As I noted and some of you seem to ignore, I am asked on this space weekly to sell my items, just as
I am bombarded with cynical and transparent attempts by dealers, whom I help with priceless knowledge, that
my things are all an embarrassing pile of junk. I am naive, but I am not stupid and I have some experience of human nature through five
decades and more of human tribulations and aspirations.
Someone who is really expert in this comparison of the normal market in shares and antiquities should make a comment.
Persons have always speculated and gambled with items and made the error of considering this activity to be investing.
In fact, I am an investor in the conventional sense, and am surrounded by those who treat investments as gambling.
By dint of my biography, I grew up in a place where this gambling and or inflation driven speculative frenzy is sadly the norm.
I think the speculative frenzy with Nazi regalia of a decade ago has passed, but the simple fact remains that these items are rare
and also the object of a global market with noteworthy demand.
Persons of a certain age, who have a limited experience in markets and shares and so forth, have a skewed idea of these things,
which has become generalized with the Sand Hill Road Unicorn fantasies and otherwise speculative absurdities which are the norm.
My collection became an investment withOUT my design, and it has been a good hedge in the recent decade versus, say, real estate in Arizona or San Bernadino, California,
or, at the moment, in, say, Exxon or British Petroleum.
I invest as a conventional investor in shares, and I think I even own Walmart, though not by my will but of someone I trust
.....but my interest in SS regalia arises from my profession and started when I was nine years old in 1961.
Too many here are fixated on the snake oil salesmen and confidence artists and or grifters in their number.
Sad to say that such persons have become so numerous in economic life and public life, generally.
My goal has been to take something of my profession and place it here so the beginning collector can be more intelligent and use this process for his or her
needs. That is, the beginner can analyze these items in a professional way. In this connection, Mr. Mint has done far, far more than have I.
What he has done for the collector is monumental.
b.) , may I suggest that one also grossly overstates the issue with these notional "museum quality reproductions," which I do not find as I survey the horizon.
Persons who never leave the Plantonic cave and only rely on digital images and also never actually handle real items are doomed to disappointment,
but they are hardly all collectors. Yes, our work has improved the fakes, but this phenomenon is not a function of the digital epoch. The advent
of the Mollo books led to a step function increase in fakes, and their character. I recall it from the 1970s.
The challenge and response of all of this is akin to war, where the defensive is, as Clausewitz writes, the stronger form of fighting. We are the ones in the defensive posture,
and this site and the collective knowledge we wield enable a wise collector to flourish.
I am offered nice things all the time now, at often at sensible prices, not the least because of my work here.
And, finally, c.) I would warn those who read this to refrain from imbibing too much of the puffed up cultural pessimism of the other site, which is all too typical of a segment of US society that is very eager to find the fault for their lot with others, while ignoring those qualities of diligence, knowledge, and discipline that are the basis of success in all things in life. The digital cesspool gives too much pride of place to the whining of lazy people, whose failings of character damn themselves and also fail to accord
in the slightest with reality. The paranoia of the Zeitgeist does no honor to anyone, and the record of those who predict things to come is mixed at best.
Sad it is, really, that persons do not hold the futurologists to account for their failures nor calculate the damage that such errors inflict on the innocent.
When all this is all worthless, I will happily set it all on fire and put the spectacle in youtube while balancing a Pez container on my old, saggy nose.
At the risk of predicting the future, rather than posting on websites, one might better think about a fall out shelter and how you are going to survive on the 100th day of the post nuclear strike environment, if you want to be pessimistic.
Merry Christmas and over and out.
Last edited by Friedrich-Berthold; 12-18-2015 at 02:06 AM.
Is this here a "museum quality reproduction?"
Is this too good to be true?
Here is a new fake cap badge, but it is obvious to a skilled collector that it is a fake.
- - ------- - -
As long as I have collected, I have heard from so many that the fakes are so expert that no one can tell, and I respond with: Goetz von Berlichingen!
Heinrich George spricht: Es lebe die Freiheit - Götzens Tod aus " Götz von Berlichingen"
And I almost thought....
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