Welcome to the forum! Quite the collection you have there. Not sure, but is that lampshade made out of a helmet?

Some very nice specimens and well displayed.  My knowledge of the Indian wars period extends as far as 'F' Troop enlightened me about six decades ago.  However I can appreciate the artifacts and the incorporation of the Rec room furnishings for a quite comfortable area for study and relaxation.  Again well done, I would be delighted to see more on this subject that I am rather short on.  Cheers, Armygas

Sorry, #46 is your blade, 1834 with a nail in it.     For #60 I don't have a pic of the date, just a repeat of the description.  It was on one of the Liveauctioneer auctions, I didn't record the auction house or the date.   The National Lancers-marked sabers are as you described with the MS marking on the quillon replaced with the rack number.  Scabbard #42 has saber #16.  Not sure what you mean by no inspector marks, #5 has an 1835 Dragoons-marked blade and has no federal inspection marks.                  

I never knew that, and that would explain your expertise! Thank you for your service! I guess I never thought of how many patches would be floating around and how many guys would be in such a unit. Yeah you hear rare a lot, and I admit I use it often. It seems generalized that anything that is remotely hard to find is automatically rare, but uncommon might be a better word. Yup, I'd love to have many things, but I won't have them all!

So I’ve posted before(mostly in the Indian wars section) but I do have U.S. militaria going up through Vietnam also. I plan on getting active in all areas of this forum, but Indian wars is definitely my biggest and favorite playground. Anyway, here’s some selected pics of my collection. There is some non U.S. militaria mixed in some of the images, so sorry about that lol

Thanks for the replies.  Most of my collection is from the early 1880s to the mid-1880s.  Here are more details. Robert    

Considering a USAF maintenance unit can have between 100-500 assigned, most of these show up. But other things factor in of course. Sometimes they may only do one run, change the design, or whatever. I did 26 years in USAF fighter maintenance, and it was typical to get 4-5 sets of patches when you in-processed a new unit. Rare may be the most over-used word in collecting. I prefer hard to find. I save rare for unique items like named patches and such where few real ones exist. But that's just my take. It's been my experience when I don't get something that eventually another shows up down the road. You can never have them all anyway!😀   Randy

And of course, I only collect bayonets, Fal furniture, and a few other approved parts since I'm still in The People's Union of Illinois. 😑

Hey guys, when were these trousers issued? Would they have been worn on D-Day? 

I'm sure this has been posted before but, Lee Marvin's wiki could be the script of a Netflix movie all by itself. Great topic!!!