I was contacted recently by a guy who needed money fast and wanted to sell stuff. He had some German World War 2 ceremonial daggers to sell. Tough items to sell. They usually have a few swastikas on them and as the war went on, the quality fell off because the Allies were raining tons of bombs onto the factories.

There are also tons of fakes out there. Also, I don’t want to deal with people who collect the German war memorabilia. I’ve had them before and just dumped them on a dealer I knew through the auctions. I was happy to see them go. In talking with the seller of these knives, he’d told me he’d listed them on eBay and was immediately kicked off (he probably used the wrong words, i.e., Nazi instead of German WW2). This seller had contacted me through my website, Somerville.com, and told me all sorts of goodies awaited me at his storage bin and house.

So, I took a ride. Except for a few pieces, everything was chipped, broken, cracked or trashed in the worst way, strewn about his storage bin, vehicle and house. Waste of time. The only thing I ended up buying was his high school class ring from 1978, and even that had a broken stone in it. It’s getting melted and refined anyway so the broken stone doesn’t matter much.

I left, drove the hour home and almost called it a day. Later that night, I got another email from him accusing me of taking something. He couldn’t tell me exactly what it was or where it was, it was just missing and I was to blame. Hours went by until he again emailed me to tell me he’d found it kicked under a box under a pile of trash.

I can picture him pulling apart the trashed storage bin, stacking torn cardboard boxes in the isles of the storage company until he found the missing unnamed item. Not the best seller –  confused, unorganized, messy, rambling. I think I’ll stick with just hunting the junk stores for a bit.

Bob Adams has been in Somerville 27 years but was a frequent visitor prior to moving here. He worked as a jeweler in a few shops in his younger years, owned his own shop for a bit, sold real estate for 10 years and is always hunting for his next treasure. He has been an antique and collectibles dealer for 30 years. He can be reached at 27winter@gmail.com. Visit his website at www.Somerville.com.