Many years ago when I first meet Freeze, he and I were discussing our individual firearms tastes and collections: Old. New. Milsurp. American. Soviet. European. Black Powder. You name it.
But he said one thing that really piqued my interest. Something I had never heard before. It went like this,
“I only pay repro prices for Nazi stuff.
That way if it turns out to be fake,
I don’t get hurt”.
Hmmm….I thought. I’d never really thought about it before. I personally never gave two hoots about Nazi marked firearms. And in practical terms, if given the choice between two exact guns, the non-Nazi marked ones were always cheaper. Aka, “Shooters”.
“Good move”, he grinned. “There is so much fake Nazi stuff out there the market is going to collapse. I personally know of two museums that have fake helmets they believe are real. How? Because I know the guy who faked them.”
Of course Freeze told me the name of the guy who was faking museum quality stuff. And how he was doing it. I won’t share it here. The man is dead now anyway. But if you are reading these words and thinking he was an anomaly, or you’ll never get taken?
Open your eyes and take a look at what’s for sale on Ebay right now. You know in your heart-of-hearts there are guys out there, taking rare and expensive firearms, and fluffing them up with some even rarer unit or branch markings.
There is money to be made. And people ARE making it. And DE-NILE wasn’t just a ground feature on Erwin Rommel’s map.
Freeze put his money where his mouth is. He saw this coming a few years ago and liquidated his entire, extensive, and expensive Nazi German milsurp collection. Keeping only a few shooter grade guns. Did he sell at the top of the market? Nope. Could he have gotten more if he had held on a little while longer? Yup.
But every day he waited, he new he was exposed to the inevitable. With the popularity of historical video games and new younger firearms enthusiasts coming into a finite milsurp market, there is some whole-sale bullshit going on these days. Even among the vetted experts.
Go ahead. Don’t believe me. Get on your favorite MILSURP forum where all the high-ranking members are balls deep into their collections. Of course this post is bullshit, they will say. Of course these stamps for sale on EBAY are a drop in the bucket.
Whistling past the grave yard, all of you. As soon at the market as a whole gets a real whiff of this problem, everybody is going to be running for the exits. And when one or two previously “verified and papered” firearms featured in X,Y,Z, collection turn out to be fake? It’ll be a financial bloodbath.
Yes, Freeze got out too early. But he’s been sleeping like a baby for over a decade because of it. Some of you guys reading this right now, you know you’re in deep shit. And we know it too.
Sincerely,
Marky
“Shooting Guns & Having Fun”
Areas of focus: Defense and National Security, Modern Light Weapons, Small Arms, Weapons Training.
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