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WRECKED Militaria - Post your "tragic" pictures!


MWalsh
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Another one which has always gotten me is the white paint phantom.... A nameless, faceless creature who roams the earth and in eternal torment sprinkles, dabs, drops, and swipes old white paint on cool militaria items....

 

How many of you have NOT had old field gear or a steel pot or a WW1 helmet which had white paint on it?

 

Fatigue or field shirts are another common one, I suppose they were just used (the shirts) as painting shirts to keep paint off the "good" clothes. I think I have had at least three WW2 Marine Corps HBT shirts or tunics like this...

Hahahah now that is funny! Yes! Heck yeah! My goodness how much stuff I've run across with white paint all over it. I even have a German helmet in my garage that was filled with paint and obviously used as a paint bucket! But Walsh I bet the phantom was Kilroy......makes sense to me!

Ronnie

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My pet peeve are the folks that will take original posters and mount them onto foam core or even laminate them. A real travesty.

 

attachicon.gif resize laminate.jpg

 

 

Ah yes. The Lamination Bandit. Friend of the White Paint Phantom.

 

That's in the category of "it seemed like a REALLY good idea at the time"....

 

I had forgotten about lamination.

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ViewfinderGyrene

Doesn't harm uniforms, but rather disrespects them. I know my sentiment is shared when I bemoan a certain someone who has his girlfriend or wife pose in nothing but under garments for all of his listings...one of his newest photographic masterpieces involves a Marine Corps blues blouse which potentially belongs to a Marine who was Killed in Action on Iwo Jima with 25th Marines [of my own findings]....I can barely contain myself from unloading on that.

 

Unnamed is one thing, but imagine if by some random chance, a relative saw granddaddy's Ike jacket that some idiot relative had sold off ending up on display in that way?!?!

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ViewfinderGyrene

 

In the same vein, there's a young lady at my local flea market who will buy every piece of military canvas that she sees, and a lot of other OD material. One time I saw her pay stupid money for a duffel bag, and found out that she take it all, cuts it up and reuses it for whatever (my guess is some kind of boho chic refinished furniture). I don't have a lot of love for duffel bags in particular, but now I go around and try to buy the named ones before she gets there. I can deal with her cutting up an unmarked piece of canvas, but I have a problem with her taking what might be the last named piece of some World War II GI's estate and using it to create the seating on some ridiculously priced statement furniture.

 

Hippie art projects....how lovely :dry: lol

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Doesn't harm uniforms, but rather disrespects them. I know my sentiment is shared when I bemoan a certain someone who has his girlfriend or wife pose in nothing but under garments for all of his listings...one of his newest photographic masterpieces involves a Marine Corps blues blouse which potentially belongs to a Marine who was Killed in Action on Iwo Jima with 25th Marines [of my own findings]....I can barely contain myself from unloading on that.

 

Unnamed is one thing, but imagine if by some random chance, a relative saw granddaddy's Ike jacket that some idiot relative had sold off ending up on display in that way?!?!

 

Couldn't agree more. It seems he has his listings everywhere. Makes you wonder why everyone's favorite auction site hasn't canned his account yet.

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Someone here has to have some name engraved medals where the names were ground down...

 

Post up those pictures!

 

USMC Good Cookie that has been ground down.

post-5665-0-38249400-1454736154.jpg

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Longbranch, that one is a bummer.... What would that have been? SF / Ranger / Airborne tabs, CIB, jump wings, Air Assault or maybe foreign jump wings, Jungle Expert, etc?

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USMC Good Cookie that has been ground down.

Drew! NoooooOoooo! Why did you ground that down like that???

 

Just kidding, I know you didn't. :)

 

Wish that piece could talk.

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Doesn't harm uniforms, but rather disrespects them. I know my sentiment is shared when I bemoan a certain someone who has his girlfriend or wife pose in nothing but under garments for all of his listings...one of his newest photographic masterpieces involves a Marine Corps blues blouse which potentially belongs to a Marine who was Killed in Action on Iwo Jima with 25th Marines [of my own findings]....I can barely contain myself from unloading on that.

 

Unnamed is one thing, but imagine if by some random chance, a relative saw granddaddy's Ike jacket that some idiot relative had sold off ending up on display in that way?!?!

Viewfinder - Yep. I agree. Hate seeing that, I suspect the guy is more a voyuer as much as it is marketing...

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Another occasionally MADDENING one is edged weapons. Ground down bayonets and fighting knives.

 

Now I am not talking about something which appears to be field done or carried as a shortened fighting knife... I am talking those that have had full sized fighting knife blades ground down to fillet knife dimensions.

 

I know you all have seen things like those too!

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My great-great grand-dad was guilty of a somewhat unfortunate incident along these lines... His son sent home a German pilot's pocket watch. Apparently, the AA guns at his position shot down the guy, and his body was ejected from the crash and he no longer needed a watch. Grandpa says it had a swastika on back, along with the man's name, but since there was a war on, that swastika had to come off... I've got it, Swiss-made "Orater", and it's cool, 15 rubies in the action, but man...

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Drew! NoooooOoooo! Why did you ground that down like that???

 

Just kidding, I know you didn't. :)

 

Wish that piece could talk.

 

It is deep enough to remove all traces on any engraving or stamping too, which is a real bummer. I was thinking that it was to good to be true, a named USMC CG for $5, and I was right. I still had to pick it up though, as it spoke to me at the time, and I guess an argument could be made that the piece is still talking - we're talking about it now.

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Longbranch, that one is a bummer.... What would that have been? SF / Ranger / Airborne tabs, CIB, jump wings, Air Assault or maybe foreign jump wings, Jungle Expert, etc?

 

Thanks to the Army changing fatigue uniforms multiple time while I was in the service, I went through a bunch of them. When I got rid of my shirts, I removed all patches; SSI, US Army, name tape, airborne wings, ranger tab, etc before selling them at the thrift shop or donating them to Good Will/Salvation Army. So I understand why many shirts will not have the original patches. I also ended up with several small boxes of used (and ultimate unusable) patches, tapes, etc.

 

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Couple abused Western 8inch knives.

 

The bottom one was just beautiful...til it got ran across a grinder.Gave $35 for it years ago at the Wells show.Great knife but someone just had to grind it.... :dry::blink:

 

post-342-0-83195200-1454813685.jpg

 

 

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23rd Inf/2nd Division insignias.This was a local man.I have the helmet,gasmask bag,overseas cap and his 1902 dress blue uniform and cap.Named to R Hanson.Paper was in the pocket.

The WW1 items were left in an out door corn crib for all of its post war life.The mice and other varmits had their way with the uniform and was beyond saving.

 

 

 

post-342-0-85838500-1454814031.jpg

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Not bad for being in the corn crib Ron...

 

I once bought a duffel bag full of the man's 1950s uniforms from his Army service. They literally were in the machine shed on his farm, and the squirrels had gotten into the duffel bag. Some scattered damage from the tree rats but all in all not too shabby for condition, but the biggest annoyance was that there were walnuts and walnut shells in every fold of those uniform. :)

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Not bad for being in the corn crib Ron...

 

I once bought a duffel bag full of the man's 1950s uniforms from his Army service. They literally were in the machine shed on his farm, and the squirrels had gotten into the duffel bag. Some scattered damage from the tree rats but all in all not too shabby for condition, but the biggest annoyance was that there were walnuts and walnut shells in every fold of those uniform. :)

 

Gotta love the tree cats....

 

Now to get the ground WW1 purple heart out for you ;)

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Thorin, what a bummer!

 

I can just see it, standing there over the grinder... "Just a little bit to sharpen it.... Whoops, too much off there.....better make the rest match... crap, now too much off that side so I better even up the other side again now...." Etc etc etc.

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