Ah! The good ol' days!

Bob Treend · Site Admin Joined: 01 Jul 2007 Posts: 80

I was looking at this forum and noticed mention of Tom Reid's book. It brought a little story to mind that I thought I would share with you buckle guys. I knew Tom very well, his brother Paul too, and I'm still close friends with John Nauer who did most of the illustrations in the books. And, as a matter of fact, I published the 2nd edition of Tom's book.

Anyway, it was about 1975, shortly after the first edition was published, that I was at Tom's house talking about collecting. It seems he had some project going on at the time and need funds. So, he offered to sell me his entire buckle collection at one pop. Now this was no little smattering of buckles. If memory serves me, and I believe it does, there were 110 different buckles, including officer SS, Diplomatic, etc. Some really dynamite stuff. Actually, the collection comprised most of his book. I was tempted but being rather short myself and not a buckle collector, I decided to pass.

To this day I regret not buying it when I had the chance. I'm sure we've all had similar things happen in our collecting over the years. Oh, well...

Bob

By the way, the price was $1,500.00

lach470 · Joined: 15 Aug 2007 Posts: 6 Location: Ontario,Canada

Hey Bob....I share your pain buddy! LOL....for me, it was German helmets - I remember back when they were $75 each!!! I was a kid in the 70's and I remember asking my dad for a German helmet (the local army surplus was full of 'em)....when he saw that they were $50 to $75 he said NO WAY (that was in 1977)...He bought me a Mosin Nagant ammo pouch (still have it today) for a whole $5....

My dad and I still laugh about that today: if only we had known!!! Such is life...

Thanks for the story - that would have been one major buckle haul!

Cheers!

Rob
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The Thicket · Joined: 17 Jul 2007 Posts: 86 Location: Right Here.

Rob you would have dropped an eye tooth then when I bought my first helmet in 1963, for a whole, .50 cents, to be followed by the best Luftwaffe M 35 DD with the early stubby bird I have ever seen or owned for free from a Friends dad.
I still have it packed away in a box where its been for years. The last time I had it out I was offerd $300.00 for it.. Whats one in 9.5 out of 10 go for now? One at the max that was not even on the same page was priced at $2300.00..

Good to see you here, Rob.. later B

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