Posted on 06/28/2015 9:20:58 PM PDT by nickcarraway
When he was 5 years old, Kevin Wheatcroft received an unusual birthday present from his parents: a bullet-pocked SS stormtrooper’s helmet, lightning bolts on the ear-flaps. He had requested it especially.
The next year, at a car auction in Monte Carlo, he asked his multimillionaire father for a Mercedes: the G4 that Hitler rode into the Sudetenland in 1938.
Tom Wheatcroft refused to buy it and his son cried all the way home.
When Wheatcroft was 15, he spent birthday money from his grandmother on three WWII Jeeps recovered from the Shetlands, which he restored himself and sold for a tidy profit. He invested the proceeds in four more vehicles, then a tank.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Ping
I would sure like to have all the old WWII and WWI stuff, that I had as a kid.
He will probably be arrested and executed for being a WWII collector.
He probably won’t be. But he sleeps in Hitler’s bed? Something wrong with him.
Go big or go home.
eh. Whatever floats your (u)boat.
“That’s Hitlers car!!”
lol
When I was young back in the early 1960s, many hardware stores had barrels of old bayonets from the Civil War through WWII for sale cheap. Bolt action Army surplus Rifles were also for sale very cheap.
I bought two Mauser bayonets but they disappeared in a move when I was in the military. Lots of stuff disappeared in that move.
Oh yeah, he definitely needs a submarine.
Definitely.
I understand the historic value, but this man seems to have taken it much further, to the point of being a fetish. His knowledge is extensive, and likely encyclopedic, but what sort of man cuts off communication with his seven siblings, just to add more to his collections? Seems as though he must live a lonely existence.
I don’t know how big a town you grew up in, but I grew up in Houston, and our 1950s Army surplus stores sold things you wouldn’t believe, includeing all kinds of great looking machine guns on bi and tripods.
I assume they were inoperable, but I almost got a French one with a large drum for I think, $35.00.
My dad also gave me lots of the stuff that he brought back from the war, and I found other things, from swords, to stamp collections, to helmets, and a bottle of 1939 German wine, in the attics and cellars of a lot of the grand old homes that my dad was tearing down for the Interstate.
It wouldn’t be my interest even if I had the money and maybe he is odd, but the historical value is immense and to have things preserved is awesome. It takes all kinds to make the world go around. He can and does live his life the way he desires.
Very interesting story. Thank you for posting it. I only have one German WW2 item and that is a knife with sheath.
He's probably got that, too.
This is awesome if confirmed to be authentic:
“It’s stunning,” Wheatcroft told me, by telephone, his voice fizzing with excitement. “There’s a series of handwritten letters between Hitler and Churchill. They were writing to each other about the route the war was taking. Discussions of a non-aggression pact. This man had copied things and removed them on a day-to-day basis over the course of the war. A complete breach of the Official Secrets Act, but mindblowing.” The authenticity of the papers, of course, has not yet been confirmed — but if they are real, they could secure Wheatcroft a place in the history books. “Although it’s never been about me,” he insisted.
One of my antique shop friends asked me to get rid of a couple Nazi artifacts that made it’s way into her shop.
One was an enlisted man porcelain drinking cup with the swastika and the German chicken (eagle) underneath. The other was an elegant little tea cup (officer) with a black double headed falcon on the bottom of it. That one was disturbing, Hitler may have drank out of it.
What did you end up doing with them?
“Hey, Winnie, How is your German?”
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