An empty shell of a gift (Or, Second World War Trench art and Identifying WW2 cartridges)

You should never begin a piece with a question. Since Ive already begun with a statement, however, I can pose one now:

When is it acceptable to put a lighted cigarette near an anti-tank shell? Answer:

Trench Art: An ashtray made from a 1941 2 Pdr No1 Mk II Anti-tank shell



When said shell has lovingly been fashioned into an ashtray by bored RAF in a desert... Why RAF in a desert? Well get to that later. For now, let's take a look at an item whose tyoe is taking the collecting world by storm. Trench Art has held a fascination for years. Its an odd combination of a personal, lovingly crafted item and memorabilia from a vicious historic conflict. Which conflict, of course, affects the value and determines the age. But it does not seem to greatly affect the type of item. An ashtray could just as well come from the first or second world wars or from very recently in afghanistan. Check out some of the Afghan stuff here:
http://bfbs.com/news/afghanistan/trench-art-day-life-3703.html
Trench art first became prominant during the First World War, but dates back to the 19th Century. Wherever in history vast numbers of bored blokes have been sat around lots of scrap metal, tinkering has usually occured...
So, with that in mind, how do you tell the age/provenance of a piece? Sometimes youll be lucky enough to find a piece that has stayed in the family from an elderly relative or friend. These items were made mostly for personal use, or as gifts for loved ones back home. Such provenance of course increases the value. My ashtray above is worth between £15 - £25, not an awful lot. WW1 Tranch Art goes for considerably more. You can at least double the value if you know who produced it and where, and if that person is in some way famous, the item approaches the realms of the priceless. In truth, it can be very difficult to tell. The key is knowing what equipment/kit was available to armies from various periods/theatres and spotting bits of it in your item. Some stuff from WW2 has bits of German medals and nazi brooches incorporated. 
Some if the pieces we see are regimental in nature and feature the individuals capbadge, again giving us clues. Royal Engineers is perhaps not very helpful, but many corps, such as the Machine Gun Corps, were only around for specific conflicts (It was formed in 1915 for WW1 and disbanded in 1922) so anything with the twin machine guns capbadge is WW1.
Items are sometimes inscribed, which obviously can give us specific dates or the names of individuals we may be able to trace through records.
Better yet, is a mark on the bottom of all rounds called a 'headstamp' used to identify the round. It can tell you pretty much everything you need to know about the original item. Lets have a look at our ashtray again, this time from below:

1941 is twice stamped, most clearly in the centre, so we have WW2 straight away. 1941 saw conflict in a number of places, Burma, North Africa, Crete, but lets not get ahead of ourselves. Top we have written 2PrNo1MKII. 2 Pounder is the weight of the shell, so an anti-tank shell is our best guess, fired from a 40mm gun. Others are better qualified to take it from here, but i believe the army used the 2 Pdr No 2 during the war, so this may be a naval shell or from an aircraft mounted weapon. The RAF hurricane's, the Tank Busters, used this kind of ammunition but not until 1942, and later in the Far East, so this is probably a naval gun (he waits for the corrective comments to flood in!) im not sure, but all the information is there for you. More on headstamps at a later post... For now my nan has a new old ashtray as a birthday gift! She served on an operational RAF station during WW2, so I hope Im wrong about it being naval...

An Old Post (Or, appreciating nineteenth century European stamps)

Ok, let's get this out of the way before we start.

There need be no argument.

Stamps are cool. Some of the greatest strange old things I have are stamps, some will be coming your way soon (If you're lucky...). These are part of a bag of 1200 I bought very recently,

 Various Nineteenth Century stamps from Holland, Romania and Denmark

These are just a handful, and heavily postmarked, but that's part of the fun. We can date the issues to specific years. Example, the Danish stamps on the second row up (called numeral issues) came out in 1875, but they were around for a good few years, so we cant know for sure how old they are. The post marks help us out, the romanian stamp on the bottom row second from right is dated 1903. Because it's all about quality, and stamps do not generally fair well with time, its easy to build up a nice collection of issues/countries with some really old dates. Danish stamps, although not massively interesting to look at, were changed fairly regularly from the 1860s onwards, and can be picked up easily and cheaply. The oldest and more valuable Danish stamps are square, rather than rectangular, and the currency is in 'skilling' which was replaced by the Kroner in the 1870s. Look out for dutch stamps similar to those in the second row down but marked 'nederland indie' from the Dutch empire in the east indies, prevelant until the 20th century and surviving until WW2. Danish stamps without a head on are usually 19th C (King Christian IX became the first monarch to be depicted on a stamp in 1904).
The Romanian issues (posta romana) are easier, as the monarch is always depicted. Identify the ugly mug and you can date the stamp with relative ease. King Carol I is our man here.

Stamps are documents, and the pattern they choose, words they employ and beaurocracy they represent are fascinating insights into the nations and people who produced them. More to come...

Silver lining (Or, identifying Edward III medieval silver coins)

It has long been VERY difficult to pin medieval pennies to specific rulers. Edward I and Edward III look remarkably similar on their coins, you might almost suspect they were related... I love the coins though. They look and feel... old. Old silver has few equals, so todays strange old thing was something of an enigma when I bought it. And here she is:



Medieval Silver Penny (York Mint)

Fantastic, lovely portrait and enough legend to identify the coin. Yes, my finger is in the picture, that's for scale, Im not a camera mong... So who is it. It looks... like every medieval ruler. The image is not a portrait, efforts were not made to capture the King's likeness until Henry VII stole, I mean ascended, the throne in the late 15th century. Before that the image was a representation of a bloke with a crown. Well, helpfully medieval mints wrote legends around their coins. Unhelpfully they are all very similar, silver is easily worn and damaged, the legend is often cut away for scrap silver and the font of the text is something like IMPACT and very difficult to read.
What can we see here? lets look again:

We can see the letters 'DUSREX'. REX, obviously, is Latin for king. DUS is only found on Edward I, II and III coins (EDWARDUS is, again, latin). However, Edward I and II mostly used the legend EDW REX. It was Edward III who used EDWARDUS REX. So we have our best guess as to the ruler. The difference between Edward I and II is much more subtle. All I can say is... Good luck with that! If we flip the back we get even more information:

Top right is EBO which is part of CIVITAS EBORACI. More Latin lessons: EBORACUM is the Roman town of York, here the mint at York is responsible. Compare the example on the left (our coin) with another one right. In the centre is a quatrefoil design, which was used by the archbishop in York when the mint became an ecclesiastical asset. Thus: Edward III, York mint. If we can identify more of the legend, it may even have the letters FR around the end of the portrait, denoting Edward IIIs claim to the French thrown after the treaty of Bretignt in 1360.

Todays lessons then:

1) know your history and you will know your strange old thing.

2) Latin is just as much a pain in the arse now as it was for our parents....

A Moral Dilemma

I am currently looking at something at once fascinating and repulsive. No, not The X Factor, something even worse. No picture as yet, but see below for one very similar:

 Republic Srpska Army capbadge

Bosnia, 1991.  Radovan Karadzic  creates a renegade serbian army within Bosnia, which is comprised of Ethnic Serbs and Muslims. Karadzic is supported by Serb leader Milosevic (of kosovo 1999 fame). In 1992, under his leadership, these nationalists begin a campaign of ethnic cleansing, killing non-Serbs. Rape and murder are widespread and systematic. The leaders have pretty much all been rounded up and tried, but of course many of the foot soldiers were not. Those footsoldiers, the renegade Serb army of  Republic Srpska, wore this cap badge on their issue hats. It was apparently confiscated by British soldiers in Bosnia iin the 90s, when the UN finally got their ass in gear and intervened. Ive no idea when or by whom.

Question is, what the hell do I do with it? I ahad a similar dilemma with two nazi medals I have. They were my grandad's (don't worry, I dont have a dark past, he swapped them for cigarettes with German POWs!) They are obviously... controversial. In the end, I displayed them, but tucked away in a cabinet in a corner so you dont see them unless I point them out. Shame in a way, the iron cross was a bravery award, many german soldiers earned them for genuine acts of courage. Then they were handed out like sweets to the Hitler Youth and regulars in 1945. They were not awarded when you committed your 10th consecutive war crime.

This cap badge is different. Maybe the guy who owned it was a random sentry, then he was arrested by the UN. maybe not, there is scope for much much worse in the Bosnian war. Im not displaying it at the moment, its a bit too grotesque. I dont want to sell it, for the same reason i wont sell third reich stuff, it can get into the wrong hands. Its not valuable enough to go to a museum. Anyway, at the moment its sat in my drawer at home gathering dust. If you're not familiar with the Bosnian war, look it up (link below) its important we dont forget this stuff.

http://www.historytoday.com/nick-hawton/conflicting-truths-bosnian-war

Anyway, this hasn't helped my dilemma. Think Ill just leave it where it is. When my son is old enough to appreciate strange old things, hopefully time will have healed somewhat. The he'll probably sell it...