Todays Surplus Is Tomorrows Collectable

[airborne1968]

Now days it is hard to tell if an item is government issue or made for Air Soft etc. I just got a woodland camo Molle II vest with pouches and some have an NSN and contract markings while some only have a part number, but same maker. I am used to having the GI manuals on stuff and the newer equipment doesn't have any. In the 1970's I started seeing fake field gear made of lighter weight material and cheap hardware, but marked similar to GI issue equipment. I would like to pick up some of the newer stuff, but I don't want to buy stuff that isn't real.

 

There are collectors for every era. I primarily colect WWI thru Vietnam (the war years mostly). However, lately I been dabbling in the modern stuff, mostly because it is my era of service but there are items that do not relate to my line of work. I had thought about buying a bunch of items and storing them away til they gained value. In 1996, I saw boxes of WW2 first aid pouches next to M1 carbine pouches (belt model), both were $4 each. I went for the first aid pouches and they have barely climbing in price while the carbine pouches jumped to $20 by 2000. So, now WW2 1st aid pouches are over 60 years old and still worth less than $10! Even fatigue shirts from 1950 are still only worth $5-$10. So, not all items are going to raise in value.

 

Then there is the initial graze because it is the new thing (ie OIF/OEF) and everyone wants a piece of the action. Now, that we're more than 10 years into it prices have dropped off on most items. And what about massive release of items decades after the fact? Remember when M1967 combat suspenders were $50 each, then uncle Sam went to Molle and released stock piles of them? Now, they're only $15 and can be found anywhere! Sounds just like all the East German stuff decreasing in value when the wall came down.

 

But the bottom line is, a collector will pay the price he wants to pay for an item. But those high paying buyers are few and far between and they are not the vast general population. The good thing is the population will continue to grow and the supply will shrink as items are collected, hoarded, used up, or simlpy forgotten about in a giant government warehouse.

[Andrew]

This summs it up nicely - if you're collecting anything purely with the goal of flipping it for cash, then you're not anywhere near the same as the guy who buys the stuff because of its' innate value to you. I've been putting more and more time into DCUs not because they will eventually rise in value, but specifically because after a recent deployment I view each patched set of DCUs represents a year or more of some Soldier's life. It's not surplus that I'm looking for; the pieces I buy represent a particular rotation, a specific group of people, and a precise setting that cannot be understood unless you were there. Buying the jacket gives only a glimpse.

 

Point being, even if DCUs never rise above $10 a top, I would continue to buy them. I'm sure for other individuals BDUs and ALICE gear have the same effect, but this is likely a smaller group - and this is also likely why BDUs in general will likely increase in value at a slower rate than the "wartime" uniforms. I won't even get into those units that wore BDUs downrange...

 

Squirrely puts it very well. I buy a lot of BDUs and DCUs (often in groups containing some of each) and other contemporary items because they represent individual stories in what will come to be viewed as an important historical period. Will they increase in value over time? Probably by some margin, but when the average price I pay these days is about the same as a cup of coffee, I am not worried about that. It is a privilege to be able to collect items like this in 'the moment'. Too often we don't place any stock in material culture until it is 50 years old. Why wait so long?

[BOLO]

I still like to collect modern militaria if it's from the enemy side, like stuff from Desert Storm / OIF

 

captured enemy gear is always collectable