"The last I ever heard of this, he was trying to find a home for them, and incredibly US museums were reluctant"
the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has made up its own laws infringing US Citizens abilities to own automatic weapons.
Aside from the outrageous prices those Spandaus would sell for, if ATF let him sell them at their market value, there is a $500 per item 'transfer tax' that ATF imposes on the recipient, even if they are given away. I imagine any museum would be reluctant to go thru all the paperwork involved. Hopefully the new post-election brooms will sweep clean there, and their Constitutional 'infringement' will be modified.
Currently, If you sell firearm for more than you paid for it, ATF will likely arrest and prosecute you for acting as a 'dealer' without the proper ATF licences, which is a felony, resulting in loss of ALL your firearms and terminating your ability to obtain more permanently (felons cannot own firearms) as well as fines and serious jail time. The ATF also can arbitrarily remove your licence if you have one, at their whim.
Ukraine is currently taking WW1 and earlier water cooled Spandaus/Maxims and using them in their front lines. Air cooled machine guns have limited barrel life due to heat buildup, requiring barrel replacement after just a couple hundred rounds, not a problem with water cooled WW1 style weapons which are favoured against Russian WW1 mass attack tactics. I am not sure if the air cooled ones in WW1 aircraft were sufficiently cooled by the aircraft motion & propeller wind.
In any case they are not 'ethnic', and are indeed 'European' and hence do not belong in that forum. As they (Maxims) were designed and used pre-1900, and well before WW1, in the USA and Europe, they should be discussed there, if at all.
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