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Hello Again
Thanks very much to everyone who helped to test out our new online catalog system, and those who participated in the 2011 Halloween 'Trick or Treat' Sale! This was the best 'sale' catalog that we have had in the entire history of AGM. Judging by the emails that we received, I think the reason for this was clearly the new availability / ordering system.
If you missed this last time, here is the short story:
- You no longer need to wait 5 or 6 hours to find out if you got the item(s) that you ordered - you will know immediately when you place your order.
- If you are curious to know if an item is available or not, just take a look at the site. It shows you that detail for every item, and refreshes every 5 seconds.
With this, we have yielded a large amount of control of the website over to our customers. All we ask in return is that you press "BUY NOW" only when you are absolutely certain that you want to buy the item. This is not a shopping cart. You can't 'buy' items just to hold on to them and then make your final decisions later on. This would not be fair to your fellow buyers, and would be a huge problem for us also. Seems simple, and it is. However, to deter chaos, we have had to institute a new rule:
If someone buys items on the catalog opening day, then changes his/her mind on one or more of them later on, ALL items from that order are made available to other buyers, and the buyer's ability to use the email ordering system is restricted.
For more information on the new system, click here.
In addition, you can now track the status of your order on the USER CP page! Anxious to know where your order is? You can log in, go to your USER CP page, and check on the status of your order at any time, day or night.
The path to a new catalog is best when navigated on all four wheels.. Our last big trip of 2011 was a monster, approximately 4,450 miles.. and you never know what fun awaits around the next turn. For yet another story from the road, click here.
Catalog 93 Preview:
Due to a change in family circumstance for one of our friends who routinely contributes the bulk of the descriptions for our catalogs, a much larger percentage of preparing this issue fell to me. This is in addition to all of the travel, gathering up new items, and working with the website guys on our AGM Insider project. I'm not complaining - in fact, I really enjoy doing the research and describing artifacts. However.. I had grown sort of used to the idea that someone else would handle the daily grind; working through all of the average stuff - the boxes and bins full of cartridge belts, canteens, normal uniforms, etc. I always got to focus my efforts mostly on describing the exciting bits. John baked the cake, I added the icing. Well... being a bit thick-headed, it never occured to me under the new circumstances that I should be baking some cake. I just kept adding icing. Before we knew it, Catalog #93 was stocked with some of the best items we have had in years! The vast majority of these lots would be headliners on any normal AGM catalog.
Rather than cut back and have a nice head start on Catalog 94, we made the decision to make #93 even bigger. The print edition is an extra eight pages, (only the second time we have ever done that) and I still ended up having to move a lot of stuff over to the 'Web Only Bonus Section.' You all are going to enjoy this one!
Catalog highlights include:
- Nice selection of British Campaign Medals including several to Royal Navy sailors
- Collection of US state and municipal WWI service medals
- Sword collection which includes some nice early War of 1812 era US swords, 1913 Patton Sabers, Imperial German swords, US Civil War swords, and more.
- Presentation 1872 Cavalry Officer's Sword to a 10th Cavalry officer cited for gallantry at Santiago de Cuba
- 1860 Cavalry Saber nicely identified to a trooper in the 2nd Pennsylvania Cav.
- Japanese 'Paratrooper Bayonet' Fighting Knife
- Nice large selection of US WWI trench knives including several of the scarce 'extra knuckle' M1917 variants.
- Kriegsmarine officer daggers
- Early pre-1848 Bavarian Artillery officer's saber
- Three Fallschirmjäger helmets including a winter camo and 'Normandy' camo with battle damage
- US War of 1812 M1795 Springfield musket
- Several large uniform and equipment groups sets from hard-to-find Blitzkrieg Era combatants representing French, Belgian, Norwegian, Yugoslavian soldiers.
- Several WWII Soviet soldier uniform and equipment complete displays
- a French 19th Century Zouave uniform
- Austrian WWI Sturm Trupp Officer's M.1916 cap
- AEF 49th Aero Squadron Pilot's footlocker group
- Japanese medals including Order of the Rising Sun breast star 1st / 2nd Class, 4th Class Rising Sun, 4th Class Golden Kite, and Manchuko Empire WWII Order of the Auspicious Clouds: 2nd / 3rd Class
- M1903 Rifle with M1908 Telescopic Rifle Scope
- M1913 Warner-Swasey Telescopic Rifle Scope with Carrier & Tool
- Regimentally marked P-08 Luger dated 1913
- WWI US Army Aviator's Hard Shell Cowl Flight Helmet, Goggles, & Photo
- WWI North Russia Expedition Soldier's Uniform & theater-made Fur Hat
- Garde Grenadier unit marked 71/84 Mauser in near mint condition
- Not one.. but TWO Spanish-American War M1889 Campaign Hats
- A small but nice quality collection of US Marine Corps related material:
- Pacific Theater 'War Diary' risque art decorated pith helmet
- Nice 2nd Division WWI USMC 6th Marines officer's uniform
- 1904-1912 Enlisted Full Dress cap
- WWII USMC Womens' Reserve uniform group
- Field made camouflage insect net smock from Peleliu vet
- Army & Marine Corps special service athletic uniforms & equipment
- WWI AEF 9th Corps Military Police Group with issue raincoat
- Imperial Japanese Navy flight suit and flight helmet
- Japanese Army WWII pilot's flight boots
- A number of Imperial German gas masks
- several US WWII Homefront war industry worker uniforms
- Spanish Civil War Nationalist Staff Officer's Field Service Tunic
- French WWI Army General Staff Armband
- Early WWI German enlisted overcoat
And much.. much.... MUCH more. That list is just a small taste of what we have in store for you on Catalog 93.
Through the kind consideration of friends, we also recently picked up a rather large accumulation of US WWI identification tags. These are on the web only since there was no room in the print version of Catalog 93 (already 8 pages over the normal size.) There are many more plain ones yet to come, but for now we put on the 'cool' tags; ones with unit markings or other interesting features that made them better than average. We gave them a temporary web category all to themselves, as we have in the past with WWI collar discs, WWII patches, and other web-only collections that come in.
Be sure to visit the site when it opens Monday at 3:00 pm US central time. I look forward to hearing from you then.
Best regards,
Jeff Shrader
AGM
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