The Fort Leavenworth Historical Society has a fundraiser militaria show every year in February. For the last three years, I have joined my fellow Rotarians and veterans Jim, Beau, and Charley as we put out a "neener-neener-neener" table.
We aren't there to sell. We're there to brag. And let people see some kewl stuff. And I mean kewl. Beau has been collecting guns for so long that he's got some astounding pieces that he probably paid $6.50 and two cereal box tops for, that are worth, well, a lot.
And I'm so jaded I neglected to get detailed pictures for you guys. D-oh! I'll correct that at a later date.
We're like a kiddie museum for men - we let, heck, we encourage, the gawkers to handle the toys (with a few exceptions regarding fragile ephemera like some of the WWI paper products Jim brought along) and ask questions.
One of the most fun things we did yesterday was to tell the guys drooling over Beau's M1911 collection (a *small* number of which he brought with him) to pick up the nice blued one in the lower left hand corner of the display.
That was a NAA-made pistol. The North American Arms Co. Ltd., of Quebec City, Quebec, Canada got a contract on July 1, 1918 to manufacture M1911 pistols at the rate of 2000 pistols per day, at a cost of $15.50 each. Heh. Even accounting for inflation...
North American Arms leased the recently-defunct Ross Rifle Company plant to build the pistols. There isn't a whole lot of data on their operations - but they didn't deliver any pistols to the US Government under the contract, which was cancelled with the end of the war. However, the firm did reach the pre-production stage of manufacturing, and built approximately 100 pre-production pistols. A pistol with the serial number 46 was submitted to the US Army Claims Board for inspection in 1920. The claims board was established to settle any claims arising out of canceled contracts or disputes about quality of delivered products, etc.
NAA pistols had all of the normal characteristics that a M1911 had but are marked differently. The left slide legend has the manufacturers name and address. The serial number is marked on the slide just above the thumb safety, the trigger is marked on the left side, sometimes inside the receiver, and the receiver is marked under the left grip. As they were never accepted into service, there aren't inspection or acceptance marks. Beau's pistol is very very nice.
That's when we tell them they're holding a Cadillac in their hand. The last pistol Beau saw sell at auction went for north of $40K.
The next pistol up is a Singer Manufacturing Company (yeah, the sewing machine people) pistol, and was the only M1911A1 that Beau brought with him.
In 1925 The Ordnance Department requested Singer do an engineering study regarding making significant improvements in the mass production of the M1911A1. The study was to survey existing facilities and methods, and to provide an estimate of what tooling and line changes would allow the manufacturer to reach a target production rate of 25,000 pistols per month.
As a result of the initial study Singer was awarded a production study of the Model 1911A1 pistol in 1939, which led to a April 1940 Singer "educational order" of 500 units. The educational study was a thorough examination of the manufacturing process and included drawings, photos, time/motion study information and the tooling setup for every part and operation required to build the M1911A1 pistol. The intent was to achieve a production rate of 100 pistols per hour.
The 100-pistol per hour target was never achieved, nor did Singer make any more pistols The tooling and study documentation was given to Remington Rand and Ithaca. The 500 Singers were delivered to the Ordnance Department and reportedly used as models. The last time one of those changed hands, it did so at upwards of $35K. Yes, that's a "k". We had an SOF guy come by who said he had a buddy who carried a Singer M1911A1 in Afghanistan. He asserted that there being a shortage of suitable pistols, and SOCOM not caring much for the 9mm, they cracked open some crates of .45s to issue to guys going downrange. This gent said he had a 1943 Remington-Rand. Anybody care to authenticate that SOCOM went poking in the depots for pistols?
In addition to all those pistols, there's Beau's complete Pedersen Device. The rest of us, combining all our artifacts, could have generated enough money to buy, well, none of those things, except maybe a new Pedersen holster, if Beau needed one, which, of course, he doesn't.
Me, I took the Hotchkiss Portative, the Mark X Fencing musket, a SMLE Mk 1 (no stars - original configuration, with a Pattern 1903 bayonet) mounted in a trench mount and the Barr and Stroud Infantry Rangefinder. The latter three all being related in terms of explaining the purpose of the volley fire sights, magazine cut-off, etc, and how that all doctrine translated to hardware and training and drove tactics.
Charley is a uniform collector, though he's got some serious firearms from his long friendship with Beau. He's also the class clown of the four of us. When I was off negotiating the purchase of a new old rifle, Charley was telling everybody who walked by about the the "Periscope" (the trench mount uses one for remote sighting) was a telescope invented in Paris... there are some kids who will get handled roughly in science class because of Charley...
It was a typical collectors show, with lots of guys playing the collector's game. Their wives tell 'em "You get rid of some of that junk!" and they get a table, set up, put premium prices on everything, and then proceed to trade with the other junkies who've shown up, and usually don't sell much, but come home with more stuff, telling the wife "Gee, dear, they just weren't buying today..." There were several hard-core dealers and vendors in evidence, but I'm guessing most tables didn't have any sales tax paper-work to submit, regardless of how much intrinsic value may have changed hands yesterday.
Like I said, Beau, Jim, Charley and I are more honest - we're just there to go "Neener Neener Neener!"
That said, Beau and Jim both donated some items to the National WWI Memorial Museum (Liberty Memorial, in Kansas City) when their procurators went through the show. In many ways, that's the value added of the serious collectors - we hold on to the stuff and take care of it until the museums are interested in it.
We're performing a valuable public service to generations unborn. Even if the Significant Other might think it's junk.
That is one thing I noticed yesterday, though - there were a lot of guys going through the show with their wives (to date, not seen it the other way around at militaria shows, antique shows are a different story) and their wives were knowledgeable, interested, and supportive. Them's keepers, fellas!]]>