Well, the Mayan Apocalypse has come and gone.. and like so many ends-of-the-world-as-we-know-it before, this one also turned out to be much ado about nothing. The worst thing is that these events come along at intervals spaced far enough apart to ensure that my gold embroidered purple robes, level 3 PVC HAZMAT suits, and even the tinfoil hats from the last one just don't fit any longer. At some point, the closet is packed full of doomsday duds, and just what can you really do with that stuff? Give it all to Goodwill?? Hardly seems appropriate.
At least this time we had some fun with it, and did some good business as well on our 'End of the World Sale.' Thanks to everybody who participated!
Now that 2013 is upon us, we have a big, new AGM Catalog ready for you!
Catalog #96 features a number of top-shelf items, including the British Victorian Naval 2-pounder gun that you see here, and a beautiful bronze French 19th Century rail gun.
Catalog #96 is also awash in medals! This is part II of the large collection that we purchased recently, with some interesting French and Italian medals, but primarily British campaign medals. This collection was built in the early portion of the 20th century, and when purchasing it I got the distinct impression that it has spent the better part of the previous century sitting patiently in boxes, just waiting to be discovered.
One of the most pleasant discoveries was a 1900 Third China War Medal with Defence of Legations bar, awarded to Edward Wyon. As described by Leonard Forrer in the Spink publication "The Wyons" published in 1917, Edward was part of "a talented family of Designers, Die-engravers, and Medallists" whose work can be seen in coins of the realm as well as many of the British campaign medals that we collect today. Edward was working in China as the foreign superintendent of the Chinese Mint in Canton when anti-foreign hostilities rendered his position there untenable. He was an active participant in the 55-day defense of the Legation Settlement in Peking, and was thus eligible for the the very rare Defence of Legations clasp on the 1900 China medal which was, in fact, designed by William Wyon and George William de Saulles. A bit of trivia, perhaps, but one that I think makes a very rare medal even more significant and interesting.
That is just a sample - there is much, much more! There are over 420 individual medal lots on this sale - most all of which would be an individually named 'highlight' on any normal AGM catalog, and any number of them would have made great catalog covers as individual pieces. Picking just a few would have been clean and neat, but this time we elected to do a catalog cover with 69 of the best of them. Even that was a challenge as some particularly nice medals are not even visible in the final version of the cover.
Speaking of cover-worthy..
Proving that sometimes it takes a nice item to draw out another nice item, we are following the 6th Navy Beach Battalion helmet from our last catalog with a 1st Engineer Special Brigade NCO's painted helmet that was just deaccessioned from the collection of a significant US military museum. It is not identified, and due to confidentiality agreements there is little else that I can say about it's history, other than it was a 'walk-in' donation to a museum that was focused on other topics for their collection. Needless to say, we are very pleased to have another nice Operation Overlord helmet to offer on the AGM catalog.
