Posted on 10/14/2026 8:42:26 AM PDT by fwdude
An estate sale purchase in Austin, Texas, became a potential public safety hazard this week, when one patron's box of items was found to contain World War II-era explosives, police said.
Officers responded to a call Tuesday from a local resident who had discovered what appeared to be grenades dating back to the war among the contents of their estate haul, according to the Austin Police Association. A police bomb squad confirmed the grenades were live and active, meaning they contained explosive material and could potentially denotate.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
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All sorts of “bring-backs” made it though when you had millions of folks returning from war.
Better to have them and not need them, than to need them and not have ‘em...
...or so I’m told!
I’m always leery of things that could denotate.
A friend of mine, a gunshop owner (CL1/07 SOT) once, when clearing out a WW2 veteran’s basement workshop of many gun-related items (like a barrel FULL of side plate pins for assembling M1919 MG’s which was a specialty of his shop) found an entire wooden case full of grenades. tucked in behind all the stuff he had already removed. he worked his way around the case slowly, carefully, then called the police who sent the EOD guys out to remove the grenades.He described it as quite a circus, said the house and block was taped off, cops at both ends of the block. I think this was somewhere on the eastern shore of MD or just outside BMO - it was over 30 yrs ago.
I knew a guy who had a live 88mm FLAK round his dad brought back from ETO in WW2. SFAIK it’s still parked on a desk at his home.
People do all kinds of crazy stuff.
Why, I know people who keep pit bulls as pets even.
Grenades from World War Eleven??
Oh my gosh!
I never find good stuff like this!.................
Just wait a few years and it could be WW eleven. Actually it already is now but most are not yet aware!
Could be World War LL, lower case.
Especially Muslims..............
I would have just quietly removed them to a safe place...............That only I knew about.............😉
They come in handy when the fish aren't biting.
Whoever bought them blew that money.
There was a guy on the internet a while back who would obtain old MRE’s from WWII and later wars. He’d open them on camera and sometimes even sample some of the contents.
I haven’t seen him post for a while so maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.
Some years back at a local auction, a crate of live WWII land mines surfaced from an estate. Apparently, someone recognized them and alerted the auction personnel. The crate was withdrawn and not sold. I have no idea what happened to it but I assume a bomb squad was alerted and the mines were destroyed.
Eh, it’s fine.
I fired lots of M107 155 mm HE rounds made in the 1960s in Iraq and other said they fired stock from Korean era. It worked as intended.
It’s not made from sweating nitro since the 1920s.
WWI might worry me. Not sure.
Do they ‘denotate’ or ‘detonate?’
I swear my roommate in college who was a Marine recon had a blooker in his trunk.
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