Hi. I just turned 60 last week. Unfortunately, the only way this age is young is to say that I have just started my tenure as an old man :}
I collect on and off for 15 years or so - whenever I can afford it.
My interest is purely ethnographic and I think that the martial aspect of ethnographic weapons is mostly secondary to cultural traditions.

Just turned 72 and been collecting since I was fourteen, I can remember swapping my collection of half a dozen German badges (there were plenty available as there had been a POW camp not far away) for a Wilkinson FS dagger and it went on from there. I tend to prefer Georgian swords and flintlocks these days but my collecting is quite eclectic, there has been a fair few steam engines, scientific instruments, watches and clocks along the way.
I don't think it ever leaves you, but I do hope the younger generation keeps it going.

I have been told that there're some younger folks in South East Asia who are collecting antique arms from the region now.

As for me, I've been collecting dust for years. :D

I think that sums me up nicely as well. ;)

Age
 

Apparently I'm a grandpa collector !
am 79 and have been collecting oriental weapons for 50 years.
My contemporaries are getting fewer .
But collecting is still a joy.

Another thought on the same theme. I've had an interest in model engineering most of my life and have a small but reasonably well equipped workshop.
By way of coincidence, very similar questions regarding the age of participants have been asked on some of the related forums where it seems that people are noticing a downturn in younger enthusiasts.

Barry was always the epitome of the adventurer/collector, and visiting him in his mini-Smithsonian in Oklahoma was something I will NEVER forget!
There was not an empty surface in his house that was not a display of something!
Always miss you my friend.

For me, collecting started much like this, I was a kid in Utah, WWII had been over just over 9 years. You could buy old bayonets out of barrels in surplus stores, and a guys dad had been a guard at a POW camp.....gave me a bunch of German medals, helmet etc.
That sent me off to US medals and patches (also in these stores).
Eventually by the 60s in southern Calif. I got my first sword, a Moro keris in a garage, my payment for helping sand down a Model A frame!

Off I went! My first regulation sword an old British M1796 heavy cav disc hilt...it was so exciting, especially that I had a book on old swords ("American & European Swords" Claude Blair, 1962)...and one of these was 'in the book'!!!
I could say........look! I have one of these!

My love of history had reached a third dimension as I could actually own the weapons used in events, times and places that fascinated me. With the cost of weapons usually a bit out of reach, I began buying books........and soon realized....it was studying the HISTORY of these weapons that was my passion, more than actually collecting them.
I still bought them, but aligned with things I was studying.........and was more for having singular representative examples of historic themes.

So for me it has been more a lifetime of research and serious study of arms history, and I have gratefully learned so much from the many authors and collectors who have virtually mentored me over so many years. These pages on these forums have presented the greatest opportunities for me over the past over two decades! and I will always remember the great discussions and adventures shared!
Now at 75, still hooked on research, but those swords collected years ago still with me. They have been my friends and guides into history........that rusty, beaten old disc hilt is still there.........smiling! :)
After all, well venerated at 215 yrs.....to my paltry 75!!!!

Hi All

I'm 51 and collecting militaria since i was 14 or so . My dad worked part time in England with an ex WWII para, Paul the Para had no children and he knew I had an interest in militaria.

One time when I was over with my dad he gave me a lot of his insignia and his second pattern FS commando knife. I still have all these items but off topic for a Ethno forum.

I have collected on and off since then but my interest in Ethno weaponry developed around 15 years ago when I kept seeing interesting items in house auctions and car boot sales at ridiculously low prices so I started to purchase the items.

I have found this forum invaluable and ever so friendly, I cant contribute much but when i can i like to include my small bit of knowledge.

Thanks and keep well

Ken

Retirement is a “penultimate journey”:-(((((

Ariel, one should never retire.

Why?

Because everybody I have known during my life who has "retired" has died not long after announcing that they have done so.

One must never stop some sort of useful endeavour.

I agree never completely retire or you will shortly expire. When I was about 14 I bought my first bayonet, a German butcher bladed type while vacationing in Bermuda. It is marked Solingen Foche and I still have it.

This tactile 3rd dimension of history is what compels me to invest time, energy, and no small sums of money to this hobby. That said, the conversations with those who are generous with their knowledge make it an enjoyable hobby.

Jim, I hope you go back and read post #108 from December 2012 (when you were a mere lad in your sixties). Thank you for setting a standard for those of us who pursue this interest.

I'm 29 years of age. After a period in the military, it all started about 7 years ago to study and deal mostly in arms and armor. I spent the last 5 years in the study of oriental arms and armor including tribal and ethnographic weaponry.
This forum is a huge plus when it comes to combining knowledge in this specific field of interest.

Hope to share and gain extensive knowledge on this forum in the future.

All the best to everyone!

Peter Andeweg

I will turn 70 next month. Bought my first surplus machete with sheath when I was about 10/11 years old. Paid $3.00 for it as I recall. Been shooting/collecting antique guns (and the occasional blade) since I was 14 years old. And it is still a passion. As far as the average age of collectors:

If you ever attend the Antique Arms Show in Baltimore, MD (cancelled this year) it is hard to notice anyone there under the age of 50.

Rick

Come on Ariel, I have been retired (early due to the sale of my firm) for more than 22 years. As long as you have hobbies/interests it is no problem.
In a year or so I am closing in on 80, so the rest of you youngsters should take it easy:-).

Yessiree! :-)

I keep thinking how old everyone seems, till I realize I'm right up there with them at 50. How did I get so old?


I was always interested in knives as a boy, and would drool over those horrible catalogs of goofy survival gear and production knives. I ended up, with great difficulty, finding a copy of Stone's guide, which fascinated me. When I was 17 I was vacationing in the UK with my family, we saw various swords and blades, including a nice kukri on display in the basement of someone's family castle. Later that trip we saw a sign for a Gurkha army museum, and my mom said "Maybe they'll sell you a kukri." Being a teenger I rolled my eyes and said "Right, Mom, they'll have a sign saying kukri knife, 20 pounds." It turned out it was actually 15 pounds, and my parents were nice enough to buy it for me. Back home I started haunting the local pawn shop and buying any bladed junk that caught my eye. After several years of that I found out there were knife shows, and at the BAKCA show in South San Francisco met Dave and Lonna Schmiedt, which started me on keris, Indian, and Philippine weapons, and after a bit I started buying Indonesian blades from Alan Maisey.

That all ended when I got married and got the look of death for spending money on things that were not my wife. So there was a very long pause in collecting, but eventually I ended up with a different wife who encouraged me to mount the swords I already had on the walls of our living room, and maybe get a few more to fill out the display. (I still get the look of death, just for other reasons)

Since then, I've decided Indian weapons are by far my favorite, and with the internet and easily accessible auctions I've been collecting a lot more. I'm trying to avoid just collecting to collect; I want each piece in my collection to be something I didn't have before, or to be an upgrade, and I'll get rid of the old piece. At least so I tell myself.
Anyway that's my history. I did have the pleasure of talking to a friend's son recently who had made his own replica panabas, and we talked blades for an hour. I recommended to his parents that he get a copy of Stone's. Hopefully he'll become part of the next generation of caretakers of these pieces of history.

I can't remember if I've posted in this thread before--must be getting old timer's disease. :rolleyes:

Anyway, I'm 73 in a month and been retired for five years. I guess that's old, although I don't feel old. My first knife was a Boy Scout pocket knife with a sheep's foot blade and a spike (still got it!). Started collecting in SE Asia while backpacking in the early 1960s, and never really stopped. There was a period in the 1960s when I was studying medicine and I collected little, but work trips to mainland SE Asia in the 1970s and 1980s, and to the Philippines in the 1990s and 2000s got me fired up. Then along came eBay and the whole world became possible. ...

Now I have over a thousand pieces and the wife is telling me they have to go before I die because she doesn't want to deal with them. :eek: