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30th
Annual Civil War Show by Robert Kyle The spring Civil War show put on by the Talk to some of the dealers, like William Leigh of Today, Leigh is selling $30,000 Confederate revolvers or
a single uniform button for $10,000. Thomas, his Yankee counterpart, once
wrote a book about the bullets he found. Today he has written many books and
owns a publishing company overseeing 150 different titles. Like Civil War dealers, Civil War shows in the 21st
century have evolved into sophisticated affairs where an old rifle can cost
more than a painted Hobbyists who once wallowed in trenches looking for spent
lead now wheel and deal in a global marketplace where flags, firearms, frock
coats, and swords can fetch five figures. Events like this one, held at the Capital Expo and Over the years the clubs, the material collected, and the
shows have matured. With the spike in interest in anything Civil War
following the Ken Burns 1990 PBS series and films such as Gettysburg (New
Line Cinema, 1993) and Glory (Columbia Tri-Star, 1989), demand and values
increased. Many of today's Civil War selling events resemble
antiques shows. An obvious difference, however, is that there is less
furniture and more old guns and swords. Still, fine art, jewelry, books,
textiles, timepieces, glassware, pottery, pewter, sterling, cutlery, and
other 19th-century goods abound. Categories of specialty collectors have formed. For
instance, Robert Eric French of Bob Cammaroto of Alexandria,
Virginia, focuses on photography. He's fine-tuned this specialty a step
further by offering only photos of identified veterans. "The market for
these types of items is always good in that it's a fairly affordable end of
the Civil War business," Cammaroto said.
"Getting into weapons and uniforms gets extremely expensive. Photos are
affordable to the average person. They're items the soldiers purchased
themselves to hand out to friends and relatives, much like you might order
photographs from a modern studio to send out at Christmas." Cammaroto said the soldiers would have the photographs made in
groups of six for $1.25. "They'd send one home to mother, they'd give
one to their best buddy, and they also collected them like baseball cards.
Every family had albums of friends and relatives and people they admired. The
photos were mass-produced, and they'd trade a [General James] "This was the first type of photography with an everyman availability. Before then, everything was on
glass or on metal. Once they developed the process where they could print on
paper, it really became affordable. One dollar twenty-five cents or one
dollar fifty cents was not an inconsequential amount of money when they were
making only thirteen or fourteen dollars a month, but a soldier could afford
to have photographs made. Some were signed; some had greetings on the
back." Cammaroto recalled a poignant incident when a collector came face
to face with a long-departed soldier. "We had a guy break down in tears. He had a saber
from this person and had been looking for him for twenty years. The man
walked up to my table, and there was the soldier, who had signed [his photo]
`Respectfully Yours.' The man just broke down and cried for about twenty
minutes in front of the table. It was a real emotional thing. It happened in Cammaroto said he's had good success matching photos with
identified accoutrements that have been collected. He cited one case when a
customer found his relative but had no interest in taking him to the next
family reunion. "A guy came in and said, `My God, that's my
great-great-uncle!' He knew exactly where the card was made and what was
written on the back before he even saw it. He even had the same name as the
soldier and was from the same hometown. But he had absolutely no interest in
it." Cammaroto said generic unidentified photos are worth $35 to $40.
An identified one can bring ten times those amounts, depending on the
subject. This particular show started slowly, according to some
dealers, but after two or three hours, a good crowd had assembled. The Expo
Center, which changed management just days before this event and changed its
name to the Dulles Expo and Conference Center after it, had at the same time
in its other large building the "Super Pet Expo." The star
attraction was a German shepherd said to be descended from the 1950's TV dog
star, Rin Tin Tin.
The unusual juxtaposition of events resulted in a packed
parking lot where visitors could be seen walking poodles or carrying rifles.
Heaven help those who stumbled into the wrong building. Reflecting on the weekend, Sam Small of The Horse
Soldier, He said it's not uncommon for higher-end material to sell
days after the show closes, after prospective buyers evaluate the purchase.
This was the case with a Confederate frock coat and a Union drum. Fred Wilkinson of Farmingdale, New York, is concerned
escalating prices are putting Civil War material out of reach of new
collectors. "Prices were steadily going up but have leveled off
in the past year or two," he said. "We're getting to the point now
where some younger people can't afford to buy. If you choke off the younger
people, then we're looking for trouble. When you look around here, the people
who are opening their wallets all have gray hair. "We're hurting the younger market," Wilkinson
said. "The reason why prices are going up is because ourselves,
as dealers, buy from each other because we can't get stock anymore. At the
end of a show something will move two or three times from table to table, and
it ends up quite a bit higher price wise," he observed. Dave Marks of Linthicum, Maryland, "walks in both
worlds." He does general antiques shows as well as Civil War events. He
had a good show, he said, especially with the smaller items. "I sold
buttons, but the photographic market is really strong and just keeps
growing," he said. "Guns are a little soft, but swords and bayonets are
soaring," commented Ted Gewirz, a dealer from "Civil War guns have slowed down because the prices
have gotten so high that too many people can't afford them," he said.
"I wish they were down [in price] because we'd have more activity, and
we'd have more fun." Civil War shows such as this occur with regularity up and
down the East Coast and west to For more information on this show, write the |
� 2002 by Maine
Antique Digest