Yard Sales, Flea Markets and Antique Shops 2024

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Finally made time for photos.

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Bonus recent finds. M15 French and a Bobby helmet. The M15 cleaned up well and actually has some blue hue but it does not show well in the photo. Had the device for the Bobby helmet for some time and have been waiting for a helmet to come around. Well, it found me at a consignment mall of all places.

[browningautorifle]

Perfect pith helmets. Nice little Adrian...

[Aragorn243]

The N140 is 1950's production, the DSA-100 is 1966 so Korean War and Vietnam era. Nice.

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Are the colors correct for the service? Read somewhere USMC did not use green,

[Aragorn243]

I would assume so, they are both military contracts. I wouldn't see why the USMC wouldn't use green either as that would be appropriate for use in Vietnam.

Possibly what you read was concerning drill sgts. They may have only used khaki. It might also be for today's military as a lot of uniforms went to desert tan instead of green.

I don't know what period your hat devices are for. I thought about getting a USMC one but seemed too complicated figuring out correct period for mine.

[Aragorn243]

Yard Sale season officially started today but it was a complete bust. Only thing we brought home was a stuffed Pillsbury Dough Boy (definitely not the WWI type). The trouble with these early sales is they are nearly all Mennonite sales. I have nothing against Mennonites, but they are generally pacifists, don't serve in the military, don't collect military and are predominantly selling baby clothes, baked goods, religious items and plants, none of which is helpful to expanding my collection. Stomach maybe but we didn't find many baked goods this morning either. Hoping for better luck at the Antique flea market tomorrow. Last weekend I made out like a bandit in the book department. It was William Penn's Charter Day meaning the birthday of Pennsylvania and all the state museums are free of charge that day. So, we went up near State College to the PA Military Musuem which to be honest, isn't worth the trip but if you're in the area it's OK. Very small collection which is duplicated by just about every other military museum I've been too. Small firearms, a couple of jeeps, a Renault tank, a couple of cannons, mortars, and uniforms. But they had a bookstore which was 50% off everything both new and used and they had a lot of used books and they had them priced cheap to begin with. 50% off was stealing them practically. Ballantine Illustrated World at War books ended up at 50 cents each. Mostly odd stuff I picked up, two books on the JU 87 Stuka, one on the Val dive bomber, two on dive bombers in general, The Aleutian Islands campaign. Battle of Midway, Japan's invasion of China, Germany's invasion of Crete, the Zero, US carrier bombers, Wildcat aces and the Falklands air war. I just kept piling them up. the Val book was the most expensive at $9, it's one of the Crowood Aviation series. Big stack of odd, hard to find books for $62.

[Aragorn243]

Rainy looking morning that remained dry. A few were outside this morning, and I found a fellow with some WWI tunics. I thought this one to be the most interesting as it had its collar disks and an Ordnance Sergeant's rank on the sleeve. Researching this came up with more questions rather than answers. The Ordnance rank was phased out in May of 1918, but I don't know if that meant they would need to be replaced if already on the uniform by that time or left on. It seems they did things "on the cheap" in those days and the soldiers were responsible for sewing their own patches on so it is possibly it was simply not replaced. The upside-down chevron on the left sleeve I believe is gold bullion thread that has lost all its color which would mean this individual served for six months overseas. The gold chevron on the shoulder could be a discharge chevron although they are supposed to be red, not gold, or possibly a shipboard service chevron which I did find one example labeled as such but seems unusual for an Army tunic, the example was an Army tunic also. The US NP collar disk designates US National Army which I think means this individual was part of the "draft" army rather than the standing regular army of the time which was rather small at 100,000 men. Always a bit of mystery with these old uniforms.

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Stomach maybe but we didn't find many baked goods this morning either.

I anticipated that comment.
I had been thinking about wiling my book collection to my local library until a friend mentioned where he got most of the books, I buy from him. Opened one by James Stockdale (Vietnam POW and VP candidate) which was previously owned by my local library. Never loaned and looked to be unread.

[Aragorn243]

I buy a LOT of books. I am fortunate or cursed depending on how you look at it to have access to numerous used books. A lot of them are ex-library. It's hard for me to come up with an average but I would say between 5 and 10 books a week would be accurate. I realize that could be 520 books a year, but my house is crazy full of books. They are piled everywhere, and I have bookcases everywhere. I've made three stops at my local re-uzit store this week without buying a single book, that is very unusual for me. But even with that I'm at 23 books for the past two weeks and I still have two days to go. I did get rid of a dozen boxes of books I decided I didn't need or want anymore last fall. Most of them came from the same re-uzit store I bought them from.