Why are SS items so much more expensive than Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, etc.
Article about: The SS is my favourite subject by far. Unfortunately I have to stick to reading, studying forums and drooling at SS items as they are beyond my financial reach. If I ever gave in to buying S
Re: Why are SS items so much more expensive than Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, etc.
The SS is my favourite subject by far. Unfortunately I have to stick to reading, studying forums and drooling at SS items as they are beyond my financial reach. If I ever gave in to buying SS I think I would lose my house!!
I am happy with my other Third Reich collections and can only dream of one day maybe acquring something SS
In the meantime I enjoy seeing collections as amazing as Friedrich's
Nick
"In all my years as a soldier, I have never seen men fight so hard." - SS Obergruppenfuhrer Wilhelm Bittrich - Arnhem
Re: Why are SS items so much more expensive than Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, etc.
My thoughts.
Simple market forces. Scarcity versus demand is the main driver.
Scarcity was touched on earlier. Demand is a function of notoriety. You have the camp guard factor on one end of the spectrum, and their fame as fighting formations.
I think fakes actually drive prices up. Fakes sow doubt. When you encounter a real item, you will pay a premium for certainty. It is hard to baseline SS prices the same as Heer, etc.
Re: Why are SS items so much more expensive than Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, etc.
by Wolfspear
The SS is my favourite subject by far. Unfortunately I have to stick to reading, studying forums and drooling at SS items as they are beyond my financial reach. If I ever gave in to buying SS I think I would lose my house!!
I am happy with my other Third Reich collections and can only dream of one day maybe acquring something SS
In the meantime I enjoy seeing collections as amazing as Friedrich's
Nick
Thanks, dear sir, but Bob Hritz has the truly outstanding SS collection. I own some odds and ends and post the same pictures over and over to create a mis impression. It is like the Soviets flying the same airplanes over the May Day parade five times to scare the visiting attaches. I am sorry to make you drool, though. My goal has been to foster knowledge, which may be self defeating at the end of the day.
In fact, we are all still responding to Nazi propaganda and its mise en scene versus reality. There is a documentary in You Tube about television in the III. Reich which has kinoscope films of the first TV broadcasts of the era (the Nazis began regular TV broadcasting ca. 1935/6) and these films are quite different in their effect from the Riefenstahl editing master pieces that we otherwise know and which dominate our view of things. Or the photographs in the propaganda volumes, which make these men in black uniforms seem more monumental and iconic than they were in real life. In the TV films they look far more ungainly, far more human, far more like the people you see in Edeka or the Aral gas station in the A9 Autobahn than they do in our propaganda drenched view of things.
SS regalia profits from its appearance in propaganda images, and like any other consumer item in our consumer culture, we respond to it. Hence, the market forces and hence the price. Our culture becomes more dominated by visual images and their symbolic meaning and the Nazis were especially adept at this phenomenon at an earlier stage in the development of our society.
Forgive me for being so commercial, which I am not in fact, but such is the truth. The stuff is much akin to designer clothes with all the hype and spin associated with same.
Also, death cult kitsch is a big seller, too, for reasons that I shall let someone else explain; that is, the black clothing and the "scull" shock value piece. Too bad the Deschler and Soehne people did not get residuals from their cap badges.
Happy foetid regalia.
PS My colleague's comments about the factor of security imposed by the avalanche of fakes has great merit, too, I guess, in that one is driven into a very small number of vendors with their cartel and they exploit the element of fear with the pound of flesh pricing procedure. All too contemporary to be sure.
best wishes, FB
Last edited by Friedrich-Berthold; 06-04-2010 at 07:32 PM.
Re: Why are SS items so much more expensive than Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, etc.
by Friedrich-Berthold
Thanks, dear sir, but Bob Hritz has the truly outstanding SS collection. I own some odds and ends and post the same pictures over and over to create a mis impression. It is like the Soviets flying the same airplanes over the May Day parade five times to scare the visiting attaches. I am sorry to make you drool, though.
best wishes, FB
"odds and ends" !!!!!!
Indeed Bob has an outstanding collection and knowledge
Nick
"In all my years as a soldier, I have never seen men fight so hard." - SS Obergruppenfuhrer Wilhelm Bittrich - Arnhem
Re: Why are SS items so much more expensive than Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, etc.
by Wolfspear
"odds and ends" !!!!!!
Indeed Bob has an outstanding collection and knowledge
Nick
Thanks. I own some tunics and some caps. Master Hritz has these in more depth and breadth than do I, plus he has a killer collection of insignia, which I do not collect and could never collect because of the enormous psychological toll it would exact on me. I collect the insignia sewn or affixed to the tunic and the cap, which limits things and also shows the object in context. He has a wonderful collection of cuff titles and collar patches, which, as you know, would take a large fraction of the global GDP to duplicate today.
So, I have odds and ends that I display with some verve but the reality is much more modest than the electric pictures. This being said, I have many things I have never shown since my camera broke and pissed me off, and now I do not make pictures anymore. I do not see very well, in fact. Some of you make wonderful pictures, and these images are themselves very powerful.
Thanks for the kind thoughts and best of luck with your collecting.
Last edited by Friedrich-Berthold; 06-04-2010 at 07:31 PM.
Re: Why are SS items so much more expensive than Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, etc.
A follow up question that perhaps H-B, Bob or anyone else may be fit to answer...
I have come to the remarkable but no less candid conclusion that my best chance of ever owning something SS will probably be in the form of a dagger. In the face of tunics, visors and even stand-alone insignia it seems to me that SS daggers are actually quite cost effective. I have seen very nice SS daggers, with chain intact for 6,500USD. By comparison, that's still thousands less than a typical cap.
The question:
Why are SS daggers cheap compared to SS visors and insignia? It seems that the materials alone--wood, blade, chains, scabbard, fittings, would all be more inherently expensive and involved than merely cloth and stamped alloy.
Re: Why are SS items so much more expensive than Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, etc.
by locloc08
A follow up question that perhaps H-B, Bob or anyone else may be fit to answer...
I have come to the remarkable but no less candid conclusion that my best chance of ever owning something SS will probably be in the form of a dagger. In the face of tunics, visors and even stand-alone insignia it seems to me that SS daggers are actually quite cost effective. I have seen very nice SS daggers, with chain intact for 6,500USD. By comparison, that's still thousands less than a typical cap.
The question:
Why are SS daggers cheap compared to SS visors and insignia? It seems that the materials alone--wood, blade, chains, scabbard, fittings, would all be more inherently expensive and involved than merely cloth and stamped alloy.
I agree. SS daggers are actually good value for money. Let's keep it that way.
Re: Why are SS items so much more expensive than Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, etc.
I think that when the war ended no one in there right mind wanted to be connected to the SS, I would bet that the bonfires around Germany after the war were full of SS items and pictures of Hitler. Of course, you know that everyone in Germany was in the Resistance.
Bookmarks