Well I am hoping this year to start building my "war room" to display my collection. I am going to build it in my walkout basement, but I need to have a window put in the area where I will be building the room (it will be my office as well). I also need to frame it and put the walls up, put in floors, and run some electrical wiring to install lights and sockets.
I want to get manikins to display the uniforms, and put up glass display cases for many of the other small items such as medals and awards, and shelves to display the equipment.
I'm also toying with the idea of building a trench wall display on one of the walls to make a WW1 scene maybe. We'll see if that happens.
Either way, I started cataloging my collection for insurance purposes. I literally have about 2 to 3 dozen footlockers and boxes with my collection stored in the basement at the moment. I opened up one of the boxes and starting plugging away. Here are the first items I started with. Some of it I may have posted before. None of these items I am posting now are anything special, rare, or expensive, but are still pretty neat regardless.
I collect all countries, and all eras but I prefer WW2 and Cold War items, so I will be posting a whole slew of different stuff as I open the boxes.
Iron Cross 2nd Class
M43 Heer Trapezoid Cap Patch
Autographed Willi Reschke picture (addressed to me. Thank you
seesul
) I need to frame it.
Erwin Rommel photographs
These are made from the original negatives, but were made in 1990s. The black and white one was given to me by Rommel's son Manfred and Afrika Korps veterans in the Afrika Korps association back in 1997 when Manfred was the guest of honor at an event I was at (we all got one, not just me). The colored one I just picked up at the Rommel Museum at his grave site. I need to frame them both.