What piqued your interest about military surplus?

[Aragorn243]

I've been a military history nut since the 1st grade and I started taking every war book in the school library home. That was basically my thing for the first 25 years, books. I've accumulated a massive library that takes up several rooms of my house. Not really sure what caused a jump from books to the actual things talked about in the books but when I made it I made it pretty hard which is how I've always been. I'm a collectaholic and have many collections which were a passion for anywhere from months to years. I collected hard until I couldn't afford it anymore. Military stuff has lasted about 30 years now with the last 20 being pretty aggressive. Part of the appeal is there is always another direction to go when one is topped off. First thing I actually bought was a rifle, SMLE MKIII* followed shortly after by a Swedish Mauser and a few months later with an Australian cadet rifle. Then our first child arrived and all that came to an end for about 10 years. Then I went with bayonets as they were much cheaper than rifles. 10 more years and the kids are grown or at least one of them is and I went back to rifles with bayonets being items of opportunity. Gradually bayonets and rifles both reached the realm of I bought all those I can afford so I moved on to pistols, canteens, helmets, mess kits and gear. Now I pick up almost anything of interest but keep a special eye out for WWI US cavalry items. I still get the occasional rifle or bayonet when I come across one I can afford, pistols are slowing down to a couple a year, just running out of canteens and mess kits, helmets suddenly became very costly so they've slowed. My solution seems to have been to move to military toys. It's a constant battle. In summary. I still buy it all, I rarely get rid of anything and I do not have that large of a house and my kids didn't take their stuff with them when they moved out. I struggle. I am a "one of" collector. I try to get one example of an item. One Garand, one Luger, one British WWII canteen, etc. I don't specifically collect variants. The only real exceptions to this are when I have multiple rifles, usually of different types, that take the same bayonet. Then I will have multiple bayonets and I will try to have different variants. Variants would allow me to continue affordable purchases but then I would really run out of room faster. I put on displays every once and a while and one is all I really need for that. That being said, I currently have 20 milsurp pistols and 108 milsurp rifles. several hundred bayonets, couple dozen canteens, same with mess kits, and several large boxes of various military gear ranging from horse halters, tents, rucksacks, blankets, medals, uniforms and a counter top filled with munitions, grenades, mortars, shells, and bombs, all inert of course. And with some searching, most of it can be viewed somewhere on this website.