That Mythical 'Warehouse In Germany'........

[Martin Bull]

OK,I'm just musing out loud here.......

....but not for the first time, wandering the stalls at W & P, a couple of friends and I thought back over 10+ years of visiting these fairs, and the way some years see a 'glut' of items ( often German ) which momentarily drives prices down.

For instance, Beltring 2002 saw piles of rusty K98s and Panzerfaust tubes being sold by German dealers. Priced at £10 each, they had apparently been 'found in a lake near Berlin'. A few years later, there were loads of quite good Zeltbahns. Another year saw large numbers of FF33 field telephones. Forward to Ciney 2013 and it was steel shell transport canisters. La Gleize this year had dozens of good wooden Wehrmacht ammo crates, and also at La Gleize and W&P a lot of Panzer engine-heating blowlamps and Jerrycans.

In our imagination, we can imagine ( 'Combat Dealers' - style ) a rusting warehouse door deep inside Germany being prised open to reveal...........what next ?

[Larry C]

The world is not as small as we thought...it seems that some of this stuff is still coming out and being found. Cool !

[Danmark]

Ship some down here.

There will be plenty of takers......

[TrondK]

As we remember when the conflict in Syria? exploded, locals pryed open old crates in weapon storages and piles of stg44 filled the floor.

Anyone know if someone managed to sink their claws into any of these and save them?- or if they are all destroyed or what?!

[ironcross13]

As stuff gets passed down the generation it will have less sentimental value so a lot of young people will sell.
So we could see a lot of stuff coming up in the future.

As we remember when the conflict in Syria? exploded, locals pryed open old crates in weapon storages and piles of stg44 filled the floor.

Anyone know if someone managed to sink their claws into any of these and save them?- or if they are all destroyed or what?!

yeah a sad day to seem them go to waste like that

[Gary J]

Also remember the "easing" of materials coming out from behind the Iron Curtain !! ....... from 89 onwards, Eastern front conflict items suddenly had value to sell to the west. ...... in a short period of time, pandora's box had been opened !

[tailor marc]

I wonder what maybe in the vaults of the kremlin?

[lithgow]

'Pandora's Box' is a bad thing-refers to all the sorrows of the world being released out of the thing that imprisoned them-treasure trove is the term for finding the good stuff-the Eastern Bloc practice of storing arms and other supplies in a very dispersed way in govt buildings, factories, schools etc and the habit of burying stuff either for hidden storage or simple disposal would explain much of the sudden appearance of lots of a certain item-in our region, it used to be common on many Pacific islands to find lots of US equipment simply abandoned at the end of the war-wasn't needed, cost more than it was worth to transport and everyone was simply keen to get home by then=saw a travelogue/documentary made in the 1970s which featured a sailing ship travelling the Pacific-the ship needed a new engine so they went to an ex island base and just took one-probably couldn't happen now!

[kradman]

Even 10 years in Finland there were large warehouses full of German and Russian ww1/ww2 items its a shame these days are now gone