Thumper
04-26-2019, 05:13 PM
For a good part of this week, I've been doing some "cleaning". Mostly trying to get my garage a bit more organized. I have a 900 ft/sq. garage and haven't been able to fit a car in there for the past 25 years or so! I plan on having a huge garage sale sometime this year, probably when the snowbirds come down for next winter as they have nothing better to do than go around to yard sales every weekend. ;)
At the same time, I've been separating eBay stuff I've bought at estate sales over the past few years. Stuff that I can sell and make a decent profit, and stuff that once it sells, eBay, PayPal and the Post Office will be the only ones making any money. There's a definite learning curve to find out what sells and what profit potential there is. I have a load of stuff I bought in my early, "formative" days that got piled in a corner because the stuff is basically worthless (read; profitless) unless I sell them at a yard sale with no expenses other than what I paid.
That leads me to the subject of this post. While digging through boxes stored in the garage, I found stuff from my military days that I'd boxed up when we moved from California to Florida 30 years ago. They came off the U-Haul, got put away in a corner of the garage and haven't been touched since. I have some medals that I think I'll have mounted in a nice shadow box, then give them to my son. I dug out a pretty cool letter from the U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia thanking me for doing something that he couldn't really talk about, dealing with people he couldn't talk about, in a situation he couldn't talk about and I was awarded a medal that was later taken back from me and stricken from my DD214 because "We weren't in Cambodia!". Ha! Figure THAT one out. Oh well, the pitfalls of being someplace, while in the military, when the military wasn't "really" officially (legally?) there. ;) (That's one reason it's so hard to document AO exposure or PTSD claims all these years later)
I guess I'll just frame that one and let people wonder what it was for. Duh! :D
BUT ... I did dig out something cool (to me anyway) that may interest someone here. We used to fly ARDF missions over 'Nam, Cambodia and Laos back in the day and had to go through jungle training in the Philippines. (JEST - Jungle Evasion Survival Training) While in the Philippines in the very early 70's, I bought a knife from a Negrito native. (there is also a portion of the tribe in Thailand called Maniq) For part of the training, the U.S. government would dump us into the jungle to evade the "enemy" and we'd be given a disk (like a poker chip) to keep with us. Then they'd cut the Negrito loose to track and locate us. Those little bastards are like human bloodhounds! If they found us within a certain time frame, we flunked the course and had to re-take it. Once they found us, we'd have to turn over our chip and the gov't would pay them X-amount of $$$ for every chip they turned in. So, they were on a MISSION when looking for us!
Anyway, to make a few bucks on the side, the Negrito would make knives from old military Jeep leaf springs from vehicles we dumped there after WWII. Almost all of the Negrito carried one in one form or another and I can remember how easily they'd hack through a thicket of bamboo with those knives! As an early 20-something year old kid, I thought they were the coolest thing ever. I HAD to have one. I have no idea whatever happened to the sheath, but it was somehow lost over the years. After digging this thing out of a box of memorabilia, I've decided to sell it. What am I going to do with it? It's been sitting, hidden away in a box for the past 30 years and if there's one thing I've learned after attending a bazillion estate sales, family usually doesn't give a squat about your "cool junk" and it goes to some bozo eBay seller for pennies on the dollar. Why not have it pay for part of my next cruise?
Ok, I brought it up to my office to do a net search and see if Google could find anything like it. WTF? The FIRST site that came up (from a little over a year ago) is an EXACT match for the knife I have. I'm too busy to search any further right now, so I don't know if this is a good price ... high ... or even low, but somebody did buy it. The description does give a little insight into these knives. I'm not so sure I'm buying into the previous owner's story about being custom made "for him by his instructor" ... whom I'd assume was a Negrito, but take it for what it's worth. I remember a table with 6-8 of these knives out in the village and I simply picked one out. Here's the first one that popped up on the net. I blew this pic up to full size and held my knife to the screen. It is an EXACT match ... almost like it was mass produced, but when looking at it, it's obvious it's been hand forged and had a hand-made handle carved for it! I'm assuming they drew a pattern for cutting the Jeep springs and all the blades are extremely similar. Who knows? Or this guy could very well have bought ... errr, I mean, had his made ... by the same guy who made mine. I dunno.
From the net: https://www.arizonacustomknives.com/knives-by-maker/philippines/173306.html
10634
And here's mine: (It's HEAVY at 1 lb. 10-1/2 Oz.)
10627 10628 10629
10630 10631 10632
10633
At the same time, I've been separating eBay stuff I've bought at estate sales over the past few years. Stuff that I can sell and make a decent profit, and stuff that once it sells, eBay, PayPal and the Post Office will be the only ones making any money. There's a definite learning curve to find out what sells and what profit potential there is. I have a load of stuff I bought in my early, "formative" days that got piled in a corner because the stuff is basically worthless (read; profitless) unless I sell them at a yard sale with no expenses other than what I paid.
That leads me to the subject of this post. While digging through boxes stored in the garage, I found stuff from my military days that I'd boxed up when we moved from California to Florida 30 years ago. They came off the U-Haul, got put away in a corner of the garage and haven't been touched since. I have some medals that I think I'll have mounted in a nice shadow box, then give them to my son. I dug out a pretty cool letter from the U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia thanking me for doing something that he couldn't really talk about, dealing with people he couldn't talk about, in a situation he couldn't talk about and I was awarded a medal that was later taken back from me and stricken from my DD214 because "We weren't in Cambodia!". Ha! Figure THAT one out. Oh well, the pitfalls of being someplace, while in the military, when the military wasn't "really" officially (legally?) there. ;) (That's one reason it's so hard to document AO exposure or PTSD claims all these years later)
I guess I'll just frame that one and let people wonder what it was for. Duh! :D
BUT ... I did dig out something cool (to me anyway) that may interest someone here. We used to fly ARDF missions over 'Nam, Cambodia and Laos back in the day and had to go through jungle training in the Philippines. (JEST - Jungle Evasion Survival Training) While in the Philippines in the very early 70's, I bought a knife from a Negrito native. (there is also a portion of the tribe in Thailand called Maniq) For part of the training, the U.S. government would dump us into the jungle to evade the "enemy" and we'd be given a disk (like a poker chip) to keep with us. Then they'd cut the Negrito loose to track and locate us. Those little bastards are like human bloodhounds! If they found us within a certain time frame, we flunked the course and had to re-take it. Once they found us, we'd have to turn over our chip and the gov't would pay them X-amount of $$$ for every chip they turned in. So, they were on a MISSION when looking for us!
Anyway, to make a few bucks on the side, the Negrito would make knives from old military Jeep leaf springs from vehicles we dumped there after WWII. Almost all of the Negrito carried one in one form or another and I can remember how easily they'd hack through a thicket of bamboo with those knives! As an early 20-something year old kid, I thought they were the coolest thing ever. I HAD to have one. I have no idea whatever happened to the sheath, but it was somehow lost over the years. After digging this thing out of a box of memorabilia, I've decided to sell it. What am I going to do with it? It's been sitting, hidden away in a box for the past 30 years and if there's one thing I've learned after attending a bazillion estate sales, family usually doesn't give a squat about your "cool junk" and it goes to some bozo eBay seller for pennies on the dollar. Why not have it pay for part of my next cruise?
Ok, I brought it up to my office to do a net search and see if Google could find anything like it. WTF? The FIRST site that came up (from a little over a year ago) is an EXACT match for the knife I have. I'm too busy to search any further right now, so I don't know if this is a good price ... high ... or even low, but somebody did buy it. The description does give a little insight into these knives. I'm not so sure I'm buying into the previous owner's story about being custom made "for him by his instructor" ... whom I'd assume was a Negrito, but take it for what it's worth. I remember a table with 6-8 of these knives out in the village and I simply picked one out. Here's the first one that popped up on the net. I blew this pic up to full size and held my knife to the screen. It is an EXACT match ... almost like it was mass produced, but when looking at it, it's obvious it's been hand forged and had a hand-made handle carved for it! I'm assuming they drew a pattern for cutting the Jeep springs and all the blades are extremely similar. Who knows? Or this guy could very well have bought ... errr, I mean, had his made ... by the same guy who made mine. I dunno.
From the net: https://www.arizonacustomknives.com/knives-by-maker/philippines/173306.html
10634
And here's mine: (It's HEAVY at 1 lb. 10-1/2 Oz.)
10627 10628 10629
10630 10631 10632
10633