I took a sick day from work yesterday and drove 3 hours south to an auction south of me in hopes of dragging home some new toys.
An interesting auction, with a number of medium and large caliber items, most in fair to poor condition.
There were a few gems, some recognized, some hidden away. It was typical of many current auctions, with part of it being limited to the attendees, part of it also online. There was a lot of surplus type crap that nobody wanted, canvas, web gear, crates of shoe polish, flypaper etc. In many of the boxes though, there were isolated pockets or individual items of ordnance. If you wanted it, you had to buy the box. If you were not quick to identify your desires, the bid changed to the entire pallet and you could be forced to purchase 300-400lbs of canvas just to save a couple of cases that you were interested in. For $5.00-10.00 a good buy, but a lot of crap.
The Auction folks were pretty good people, but knew absolutely nothing about ordnance. Items had been identified by a “friend that knows about ordnance”, but he apparently knows considerably less about ordnance that either of my dogs. Groupings were terrible, mortars were described as bombs, bombs as rockets, and so on. It didn’t seem to make much difference, as most of those bidding didn’t know much more. There were 1-2 people bidding to re-sell on the internet and they were a constant thorn in the side, but it was entertaining to watch them ignore decent items and vastly overbid on some cheap crap ($700 on an M33 training claymore mine???). I believe the highest bid was made on some beat up Hellfire missile parts, about $1700-1800. Not far behind that was a Panzerfaust, then a FLAK 8.8. Most of the highest prices went to internet bidders.
I did pretty well, finding a couple of new pieces and picking up a lot of minor stuff in box groups filled generally with junk.
In one box lot there was a group of rough L60 40mm rounds, but with one 37mm mixed in that few recognized, my now third variation of a 37mm Davy Crockett subcal dummy. In one mixed box was an unusual 20mm sabot(?) projectile, with two petals and a deeply dished base. I also found a very cool “witness plate” piece, an apparent 37mm AP slug that impacted and tore loose a small chunk of armor, remaining lodged inside. Also picked up a 20mm DC projectile and some assorted 25mm TP and 30mm dummies, a few grenades to include a WWI Russian toxic grenade and my 50th different model of 155mm. All-in-all a fun day, and much better than work.
