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Thank you for the kind offer RRPG - alas, I must respectfully decline; my interest is not generally in uniforms so I wouldn't get nearly enough out of the buckles to be comfortable taking you up on the offer.
I understand where you're coming from regarding selling items you've recovered, and as Mr Laidler says, I personally don't think there's anything wrong with selling recovered items to cover expenses (even if it's just coffee money).
I'm also OK with stuff being recovered and sold for commercial reasons, too in some cases - particularly such as the case with IMA.
There's an unbelievable amount of stuff recovered by them that's now in the hands of collectors and enthusiasts that simply wouldn't be available otherwise. All those muskets, Sniders and Martinis are now being restored, appreciated, and even shot again because they salvaged all that stuff from Nepal, brought it back to the US and made it available for sale.
Imagine if the folks from IMA had decided not to sell any of it, but rather put it in a museum (and probably not a "big" museum like the Smithsonian or the Imperial War Museum)? There'd be a lot of frustrated military history enthusiasts out there lamenting the fact that someone had acquired literal tonnes of desirable antique military rifles and was just sitting on them, or not doing them justice by putting them on display where only a small(ish) number of people could see them.
Obviously that's a different kettle of fish to the work you and your group is doing, and I understand your stance on wanting to preserve history rather than sell it, but I'd also respectfully point out that you're not salvaging artefacts from the Titanic or a battlefield so I don't think you're going to face a backlash from historians, the collecting community, or indeed any other sensible person for making some of the "duplicate" finds available to upstanding people for a nominal amount, for the right reasons.
Hypothetically speaking, if I salvaged 2,000 .303 dummy rounds then my inclination would be to select perhaps the best 200-250 for collection/display and then make the remaining 1,750 or so available to approved collectors and enthusiasts (eg people I knew personally, were vouched for by people I knew personally, or were members of recognised historical societies/musuems) for a nominal sum - perhaps $1 each. The money from that would be returned to funding the salvage work as $1,750 buys a lot of coffee and cake, or printer cartridge ink, or postage stamps, or any of the other ancillary expenses such a worthy endeavour must sadly endure.
There's a big difference between defraying costs or funding further aspects of a worthy project, and putting a bunch of stuff on internet auction sites to see how quickly you can fill a Scrooge McDuck Money Bin to go swimming in. :p
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A thought... Don't sell the duplicates - pass them on to people who have paid a mutually agreed sum to a charity of your choice.
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I do see your points and they do have validity. However, this is like asking a tiger to not be striped any more! This is something ingrained in me that will just not change. I see diggers all over the world recovering WW2 relics from battlefields and, like me, old airbases and army camps, and then selling what they find. I find this quite quite distasteful.
If I take the time, (sometimes months), to research a site, find the landowner and then dig it, the last thing on my mind is the sale of anything I find. I want the history, not the relic, but they tend to come together! As a consequence, trading is just about acceptable to me, but sale is not. That's just the way it is I'm afraid.
Many thanks for your input, all of you, but I will not be selling anything. If however, you fancy trading me, then I am sure something could be arranged.
:) :) :)
RRPG
