Bill Shea's WWII Memorabilia Blog RSS

One of the main concerns I hear from potential collectors is that authentic German World War II items are too expensive. The guy earning an average wage cannot afford to collect these “rare” relics because of the cost. Many new collectors shy away from collecting and don’t even get started because they speculate that these collectibles are simply too costly.     They say they love the history of the events leading up to WWII and know a great deal about the Axis powers including The Third Reich, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan because they have seen the movies and...

CONDITION, CONDITION, CONDITION!!!!   Dear German and US Militaria Collectors...Lend me your ears and your eyes!     You've heard the expression pertaining to real estate...location, location, location! You may have heard the expression regarding displaying your militaria collection...presentation, presentation, presentation!       Well, here is another term you should consider...condition, condition, condition! For this brief overview, let's talk about German/Nazi helmets from the Third Reich (1933-1945) and specifically World War II.     This time, I wanted to share with you two German M-42 (Model 1942) Army Combat helmets. Here are two examples:        This is in...

 This and hundreds of other exciting stories of WWII treasures will appear in Volume III of my series THE STORIES BEHIND THE TREASURES OF WORLD WAR II "The Making of a Collectorholic". I hope to have that ready sometime in late 2018.   The Saga of the Never Been Told Story of the "U-505 Commander’s Pistol"   I  could write a book about this one but I’ll give you the condensed version. Otherwise, I won’t live long enough to write all of these stories. My obsession with military history and collectibles has taken me all over the globe. Yet some of the best items...

    To many of you, this will be old news, but to some of you who may not have seen this program on the American Heroes Chanel called "Secrets of the Arsenal", we invite you to take about 12 minutes and enjoy an episode from their premiere program. This first showed sometime in December of 2014. I know it been rebroadcast at least 50 times because every time it gets shown again, I receive phone calls and emails.     Here is a little background. I was contacted by one of their producers in the Spring of 2014 because they had...

MAX 33 is now in the books! Hard to believe this show has been going on for 33 years. That’s right, and I have made every one. It all started back in St. Louis, then Baltimore which was cool. Since then, we’ve trucked to Monroeville, Charlotte, Indianapolis and now for the 9th year in a row, we are back in Monroeville, PA, which is about 20 miles from Pittsburgh. Before I forget to tell you the 2018 MAX show will definitely be in Monroeville once again. It will be held earlier next year from Thursday September 20th until Saturday September...