European Newsletter

You can always tell when it's summer in England; the rain gets warmer and there are a number of Military Auctions held in which large numbers of Nazi items are put up for sale to the highest bidder. To the onlooker this may appear to be a very fair means of both selling and buying items.

Most Auctions do a postal bidding service and this may be looked upon as first rate idea which gives collects who live too far away to attend in person a chance to acquire items.

From personal experience the author has found this service to be a dangeous and costly experience. Another practice which has crept into auctions of late with regards to Nazi items, is to use as a barometer amidst dealers, the prices which items fetch at current sales.

Let us begin at the point where you have been receiving auction catalogs for a number of months, and at last you have decided to make a number of bids on items you require. First, you might do well to look inside me front cover of your catalog and read the small print on conditions of sale. If you have no guarantee that the item is original and once you have bought it you have no redress if it is not. For better or for worse you are stuck with it. However, you have decided to bid for a Luftwaffe honor goblet. By research in your old catalogs you are aware that a similar goblet sold for $150 a couple of months back and you think that a postal bid of $160 will give you a good chance of acquiring it. You send off your bid and during the period while you are waiting to learn the result, you thumb through the catalog many times and look at the item listed (No. 374 LuftwaffeHonor Goblet). A choice item bearing the German Silver Hallmark with the inscription on the base, FURBESONDERE LEISTUNG IM LUFTKRIEG. It has an Iron Cross and eagles in combat near the rim and also in silver. In due course a letter arrives to say your bid has been successful. send $155 plus $15 for packing, postage and insurance and the item is yours. This you do and item No. 374 arrives. This is a moment in a collectors life when it is advisable for the wife, kids and any domestic pets to get as far away as possible from the collector, for when the package containing $170 worth of goblet is opened it has all the hallmarks, not of German silver, but of a fake. This is a moment which all collectors have in common at some time or another. Anticipation followed by disappointment plus depression leading to murderous rage.

Now let us attempt to trace the history of Item No. 374. It began eighteen months previous when a collector asked a friend who was spending his vacation in Austria to lookout for any Nazi items for his collection His friend, who was a noncollector, spent his vacation having a first rate time and on his last day remembered his promise thinking (must bring him something back). He purchased a W.W.I. goblet for $12. Upon his return he presented his friend with this battered item and a bill for $12... and almost lost $12 and a friend. A month later the friend traded the goblet in for some medals at a loss. The new owner of the goblet had a friend who worked in the jewelry trade and decided to advance the items history to W.W.2. It was beaten out and engraved and the previous engraving was covered with the raised silver plate upon which the eagles were engraved. The work set him back $35 and as he had paid $5 for the medals he traded for it, the goblet now cost him $40. The item was then sold as a "I believe it to be original" type item for $50. to a Nazi items dealer. However the jeweler craftsman that he was, was right proud of his work on the goblet and tended to talk about it until it became common knowledge in the trade and within the collecting fraternity. As a result, the goblet just would not sell. Then it was decided to put it up for auction. But first it was his policy to establish a high price for it. It was put in the auction with a reserve price of $100, and the dealer who owned it also entered a postal bid for it in an assumed name for $150. As always he attended the auction on the day of the sale, and with the help of friends bid the goblet up to just below his postal bid, leaving his assumed name bid to get the top price. The goblet now had an established auction price which appeared in the catalog. A few months were allowed to lapse and the goblet was once again entered in an auction. It was possible for the dealer to learn what the top postal bid was and the goblet was pushed up to just below the highest postal bid in the manner of the previous sale.

This story illustrates the folly of postal bidding and of accepting auction prices as a buying guide. The author has in his possession a pile of junk bought as a result of postal bidding and misleading discriptions in catalogs. My last venture in that respect was a bid for 20 Wermacht helmets described in the catalog, "20 Nazi helmets good condition". I won them, worse luck, even now I still have nightmares when I think of the tea chest full of rusting relics which arrived on my doorstep. Seventeen arrived, 3 got lost in transit. Being a glutton for punishment, I wrote a letter to the auction about the 3 missing helmets, after all they did charge me postage, packing, and insurance. Packing was accounted for by throwing the helmets into a plywood tea crate with an old newspaper acting as a lid. Insurance apparently only covered the items while they were inside the auction rooms. Postage appeared to be the only item that was functional. On the insurance side, I received a hard-luck Jack—type letter. I still have one of these helmets left, so if any reader wants an original Wehrmacht helmet, devoid of metal liner, chinstrap, free of charge, I will sweep the rust into a match box and send it on.

F. Van Eycke, "European Newsletter", DAS HAKENKREUZ, 1969