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Bruce Monkhouse

Pinball Dude
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https://ontario.hibid.com/catalog/214737/auction-1/?filter=online

10 hours left in this auction....some very detailed actual Canadian vessels up for grabs.  [I love the helicopter on the Athabascan looking like its taking off]
 
Bruce Monkhouse said:
10 hours left in this auction....some very detailed actual Canadian vessels up for grabs.  [I love the helicopter on the Athabascan looking like its taking off]

What a great selection of ships... WWII and post-war.  If I had the room, I'd bid on the model of HMCS Magnificent, complete with aircraft on the deck.

Dan.
 
https://mooreandassociates.hibid.com/catalog/204472/ancaster-downsizing-for-don-scruton/?cpage=3&ipp=100

Mixed through the sale from lot 205 on.  Lot 233 and 234 are mine. ;D
 
I really wish we would pass a law to get medals donated to museums. I hate seeing them at auction.
 
MilEME09 said:
I really wish we would pass a law to get medals donated to museums. I hate seeing them at auction.

It's been tried a number of times, and failed to get anywhere.  https://www.parl.ca/LegisInfo/BillDetails.aspx?billId=4327448&Language=E

Think about what happens after such a law gets enacted. Medals won't suddenly go on display in greater numbers, they would go into long term storage in greater numbers. There would be no more effective way to remove them from society at large, setting the conditions for an even lower general awareness of what they represent.
 
Michael O'Leary said:
It's been tried a number of times, and failed to get anywhere.  https://www.parl.ca/LegisInfo/BillDetails.aspx?billId=4327448&Language=E

Think about what happens after such a law gets enacted. Medals won't suddenly go on display in greater numbers, they would go into long term storage in greater numbers. There would be no more effective way to remove them from society at large, setting the conditions for an even lower general awareness of what they represent.

I would argue they do even less work sitting in a private collection
 
MilEME09 said:
I would argue they do even less work sitting in a private collection

The O'Leary Collection
Medals of The Royal Canadian Regiment
http://www.regimentalrogue.com/oleary_collection/oleary_collection.htm

Medal Sales; it's easy to be critical
http://www.regimentalrogue.com/blog/index.blog/2348768/medal-sales-its-easy-to-be-critical/

Vilify Not the Collector
http://www.regimentalrogue.com/blog/index.blog/2316964/vilify-not-the-collector/
 
MilEME09 said:
I would argue they do even less work sitting in a private collection

And if they couldn't be auctioned, and not worth dollars to uncaring folks, they'd just get thrown in the garbage.
 
So MilEME,

Offer us a solution to your concern.

Walt
 
Walt said:
So MilEME,

Offer us a solution to your concern.

Walt

Museum them as much as possible if no family or relatives want them. Rotate ever 4 months which ones are displayed complete with the story of each soldier. This way none are forgotten and can educate younger generations.
 
Most museums that are even remotely interested in war medals already have hundreds, if not thousands of sets of medals in storage. If the medals have no provenance behind them, they are practically valueless as a display piece. Your idea is impractical.

Collectors, on the other hand, generally take the time to do the research and establish the backstory on a set of medals that they own.
 
I have no doubt that by the time my grandkids are having kids, my medals will have been repurposed into fishing lures.
 
SeaKingTacco said:
Most museums that are even remotely interested in war medals already have hundreds, if not thousands of sets of medals in storage. If the medals have no provenance behind them, they are practically valueless as a display piece. Your idea is impractical.

Collectors, on the other hand, generally take the time to do the research and establish the backstory on a set of medals that they own.

I agree.  Our daughter curates a military museum and I was on the Board of our Force's police museum.  Being able to 'tell the story' behind an artifact is key.  Often, family members will bring memorabilia of a deceased family member into the museum either because they don't know what to do with it or can't bring themselves to toss it.  Museums have accession policies that govern how they accept and remove artifacts from a collection, but our museum curator would often take it all out of compassion and sort through it later - retaining and accessioning what is of value and tossing the rest.  Things like uniforms,campaign/theatre medals and photographs have virtually no value to a museum without a noteworthy backstory.
 
Currently going through all of my Grandfathers letters from the Second World War.  Originals.  Currently trying to preserve and protect them. 

He was a POW after being shot down over Italy.  Have the original telegrams listing him as MIA then as taken POW after they picked up a German broadcast.  Even have the letter from the Minister of National Defence (RCAF, which is weird because I didn’t know they had one for each element) which looks like an invite card you’d get to a dinner, offering his sympathies.  He was according to the local newspaper articles at the time one of the first if not the first Canadian POW repatriated back to Canada.

We were going to contact 424 squadron to see if any of this might have any value to their museum but my mother is adamant it stay with the family.

The letters are a treasure trove of info from a man who spent from 1941 to 1943 as a POW.  The most heart wrenching one was him trying to tell his parents he lost his leg.  And apologizing for being captured.

What you wrote lenaitch reinforces my belief that it should stay with us and not in a drawer. 

 
Remius said:
Currently going through all of my Grandfathers letters from the Second World War.  Originals.  Currently trying to preserve and protect them. 

He was a POW after being shot down over Italy.  Have the original telegrams listing him as MIA then as taken POW after they picked up a German broadcast.  Even have the letter from the Minister of National Defence (RCAF, which is weird because I didn’t know they had one for each element) which looks like an invite card you’d get to a dinner, offering his sympathies.  He was according to the local newspaper articles at the time one of the first if not the first Canadian POW repatriated back to Canada.

We were going to contact 424 squadron to see if any of this might have any value to their museum but my mother is adamant it stay with the family.

The letters are a treasure trove of info from a man who spent from 1941 to 1943 as a POW.  The most heart wrenching one was him trying to tell his parents he lost his leg.  And apologizing for being captured.

What you wrote lenaitch reinforces my belief that it should stay with us and not in a drawer.

On the plus side, it's pretty straightforward to scan them and put them up online somewhere with the backstory so other people can read them. Some of the photosharing sites have sections specific to letters from the front, and usually interesting because there is stuff from all sides.

On the flipside, it's easy for the stories that go along with them to get lost in the family as well; my dad has a crate full of family photos, and doesn't know who half the people are in them (and neither do anyone else that is still alive). Not really sure what the best solution is to that, but even a simple note on the back, or putting them in a photoalbum with an annotation on a sticky note or something would be better then nothing.
 
Remius said:
Currently going through all of my Grandfathers letters from the Second World War.  Originals.  Currently trying to preserve and protect them. 

He was a POW after being shot down over Italy.  Have the original telegrams listing him as MIA then as taken POW after they picked up a German broadcast.  Even have the letter from the Minister of National Defence (RCAF, which is weird because I didn’t know they had one for each element) which looks like an invite card you’d get to a dinner, offering his sympathies.  He was according to the local newspaper articles at the time one of the first if not the first Canadian POW repatriated back to Canada.

We were going to contact 424 squadron to see if any of this might have any value to their museum but my mother is adamant it stay with the family.

The letters are a treasure trove of info from a man who spent from 1941 to 1943 as a POW.  The most heart wrenching one was him trying to tell his parents he lost his leg.  And apologizing for being captured.

What you wrote lenaitch reinforces my belief that it should stay with us and not in a drawer.

As far as I can tell, 424 does not have a museum.  It would either be the National Air Force Museum in Trenton given its current attachment, or the Bomber Command Museum in Nanton AB given its role in WWII.  As far as I know, the BC museum is a private foundation and not part of the Canadian military museum network (OMMC).  You could loan the items to a museum ('from the collection of . . .') under a formal loan agreement but there is no guarantee they would be on display or, if so, for how long.  What we see on display at a museum is generally only part of their collection and they tend to rotate items on display.

The upside of giving/loaning them to a museum is they get shared to some degree and, depending on the museum, should appear in a database for research.  The downside is you lose custody which can be scary.  The upside of keeping them is they stay within the family; the downside is they aren't shared outside of the family and run the risk of getting lost in the mists of time without a family 'custodian'.  Either way, I would definitely make scans of them in as high a resolution you can, just in case.

There are ways to better insure preservation, such as not folding, but also using acid-free folders and envelopes.  The info might be available online or you could could PM me with an email address and I will forward it to her - I'm sure she would be happy to offer advice.

On the flipside, it's easy for the stories that go along with them to get lost in the family as well; my dad has a crate full of family photos, and doesn't know who half the people are in them (and neither do anyone else that is still alive). Not really sure what the best solution is to that, but even a simple note on the back, or putting them in a photoalbum with an annotation on a sticky note or something would be better then nothing.

Ya no kidding.  I have a box full of photos with no clue who most of the people are, or know the people but not setting (i.e. WWII pics).  Dad always spoke of uncle or aunt so-and-so but never explained how they fit in.  Often they weren't, simply cousins nth removed, or even family friends who kids we told to call them aunt/uncle.  We pestered dad to write things down and after he died we found some basic notes in his stuff - at least its something.
 
Anyone in the Owen Sound area?  A Wounded Warrior fundraiser auction put on by a local golf course ends today.
https://ontario.hibid.com/catalog/223320/online-wounded-warriors-fundraiser-auction-29-july-20/
 
A rather large military memorabilia auction near London Ontario.
https://ontario.hibid.com/catalog/203399/online-only-wwi-and-wwii-collection-starts-closing-aug--18th/?g=all-categories&cpage=21
 
Lots of military, police, and corrections trinkets...near Kitchener, ends today.
https://ontario.hibid.com/catalog/229313/august-24-online-auction/
 
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