Rembering Old Dealeers

[Horst]

I also remember Chris Farlowe and his troop - was living in Germany in the mid 60.s and I had a visit from him in a VW bus loaded with items he picked up in Germany _ I had a LAH panzer wrap and as a young collector traded this for a SS officer sword as I was into blades rather than cloth - had I only known.
I also visited with Jack Angolia when he was a Major stationed in Stuttgart Germany around 1975, he had Sepp Dietrichs summer uniform + lots of other goodies in his military housing home -we also traded items and became friends over the years.

Horst

[Wilhelm Saris]

Yes, Winiarski was one of the first I got contact with, due to his lists and Graf Klenau.
Further there are many Germans from the old days. Some are still in business:
Gerhard Rudloff, Peter Groch etc. Some are quite known and sold then militaria,
as Klaus Patzwall. Also Lothar Hartung was a well-known name and Gerhard Scheifele.
To much to mention. I still do have my old address-lists from about 1974.

From the Netherlands we had Frank van Gelder and Jan Winters. They still are around!

Learned to know Angolia in Sindelfingen in 1973 at Spitzholzstrasse, where he had a
small appartment. I visited him at various occasions in 1974 and 1975, when we (Jack,
his wife and me) went to the militaria-show at Killesberg in Stuttgart. I had all his
daggers in my hands to have a look at them. He came over to my house at various occasions.
In 1980 I visited him in Stilwell, Kansas.
I do not have contact with him for many years.

[bigmacglenn]

Perhaps some of our members know Elden Leasure, from Colorado Springs, CO...he's been in business for over 45 years as the owner of
"Leasure's Treasures"...He's known to wear an old top-hat at shows for easy recognition in the crowds...I worked for him and his wife, Sylvia for about 2 years...I came as a customer and ended up with a job, lol...!
I worked his tables at the 1999 Great Western Show ($12,000 in sales in 3 days)...He knows the collectibles business from all angles and taught me a wealth of knowledge, but I'm especially thankful for him teaching me how to negotiate and give proper appraisals...
cheers, Glenn

[Tango]

I remember back in the early 90s I used to collect WW1 cap badges .& I was in the BAOR "British Army Of the Rhine". I used to browse a price list no pictures..& you would send a cheque... & 3 or 4 weeks later the badges would turn up.. But the good thing about the company which I can not remember their name!!.I used to order using my name rank & number with a BFPO number.Then in 1991 I was promoted & hey presto when I was promoted I was sent a free cap badge " Royal Army Cyclist Corp" Now you don't get that service like that anymore . Cheers Terry.

[lew07]

Attachment 539211Ive had this since the 1980s.If I remember correctly Sussex Armoury adverised it as a pilots survival knife.The ball on the top of the handle is a liquid filled compass.Inside the handle are fishing hooks,weights and line and matches.The two metal rings on the handle have a wire saw(again in the handle)attached to them.I guess that covers everything!!!!

[lebus12]

I remember also Van Gelder

[ian]

chris farlowe allways wore an A2 flight jacket painted on the back (i cant remember what) it allso had AAC badges onthe sleaves and a pilots badge on the chest ,,it was a good old original jacket and must have been worth a fortune , i never once saw him not wearing it
as if any of you ever meet me you will see me in an A 2 jacket ,but it is a cooper only 10 years old ,,with my captains bars on the shoulders (i am an honery capt in the US army) something im very proud of

PS being an honery capt has NO RANK NOR PRIVALIGE its only an honer

[harryamb2]

some good old names came out there,with Chris Farlow if you asked him he would tell you the truth. even if it meant he'd lose a sale,so many reputable dealers out there,cough cough emmm.what who said that.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Were I born in another time, I think I might have become a bootlegger in the 1920s. I live in a house built in 1929, so maybe it is in the walls or the pipes....prohibition was not repealed until 1933, of course.
I also knew Germans and US persons in the black market until the currency reform in 1948; my mentor in all of this, a Heinz von Hungen, had been a US Army medical officer in the occupation and had bought much of his collection in the black market.
Of course at the same time, JCS 1067 made it illegal for GIs to give chocolate to children in Germany and to hold hands or otherwise with the Fraeulein Wunder, a silly rule if there ever was one.
I knew Germans who used the black market, and this is all the story of the Third Man, of course. Much of today's globalized capitalism is the same as the black market, but on an unfathomable scale.
What we do here arose in the black market, after all, and it will never shake off its legacy. To demand that it somehow all be as pure as the new driven snow is absurd, then.
To bemoan this fact bespeaks a naivete that does no one any honor.
And, if it is all so awful and filled with ruthless crooks, then collect Pez containers or become a whale spotter or something less conflicted.

[Wagriff]

It's odd, to see all the old names again.....Sad, somehow, when one realizes that 90% of the collectors today only know the handful of dealers who have websites and sell on the internet. Not All of the old timer dealers were unethical crooks...Many of them were reputable men who made the hobby what it is today. I wonder what they would have thought, to see the state of it today? Would they be pleased?