I'm speechless!

[firstgenaddict]

I've got a bunch of WWII large format negs from my grandfather... Japanese Rear Admiral signing surrender docs on his ship, Tokyo in the spring of 1946, etc etc etc.

[olredalert]

----I inherited a huge, very cool (over 2 feet long) pair of binoculars off a WW2 Japanese battleship. They came with tripod, fitted boxes and spare parts. Its fairly easy to see that they have a lot of German influence built in. An uncle worked directly under MacArthur in Japan while Mac was Governor General and shipped these home. There was never an explanation given as to how he acquired them, and I never asked. Ill probably end up giving them to the World War II Museum in New Orleans when Im so old I cant keep them.......Bill S

[supercomp 8.90]

those binoculars are very valuable bill! very cool! I love collecting ww2 those negatives neat too.

[Carleen]

It was a shame that hartbeat got hold of these parts.
He will set a high price on those so no one will be able to afford it.

[supercomp 8.90]

dead on carleen I thought the same thing.

[SS427]

My father passed away when I was 28 and had literally hundreds of unbuilt OLD plastic models, a 4 drawer commercial file cabinet full of WWII era newspapers, photographs, WWII aircraft manuals and parts and many other types of memorabilia from his 22 years in the Air Force as well as personal paintings of WWII aircraft all worth 10's of thousands of dollars. After the funeral many of his 'friends' came forth promising to put these items to good use in their personal collections. We also donated a vast amount to the ANG Museum in St. Paul with the understanding that we would get it back if they no longer needed it. Needless to say most of his items that were given to his "friends" were sold off shortly after given and the museum closed after 9/11 with futile attempts to get those items back falling on deaf ears. Our family thought many of these items would be put to better use being on display for all to see instead of stuffed in boxes. Never again!

[supercomp 8.90]

yea that's sad ss427 that happens a lot, it would have been cool to do up a display room with all of your fathers items.

[firstgenaddict]

My father collects and restores Early Flat head Fords... Ecklers or parent company bought a Early Ford V8 parts company, he reports the same situation... the business has gone to hell, and he doubts anyone at the "call center" has ever worked on a vehicle.
Ricks was well run and easy to do business with PLUS the people handling the parts had actually restored cars, they were in business quite a while and must have been profitable given the vehicles and parts acquired over the years. Why mess with a winning formula?

I have seen it many many times with larger businesses.... BEAN COUNTERS or SALESMEN running a business carte blanch is a sure fire way to destroy it.
The salesman will give it away trying to satisfy customers the Beancounters will cut it so bare the customers will abandon the company for lack of service, inferior products, or product availability.

[SuperNovaSS]

Do you think this is all new inventory or many they are taking pictures of all their original stuff in stock to show what they have? Seems like the latter to me. Either way, very impressive!

Jason

[YENKO DEUCE REGISTRY]

Take it easy on the bean-counters, most of the time they are simply the voice of reason!!! [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/eek.gif[/img]