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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

A tenuous Ebay listing


zippy.72

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  • 8 years later...

Just an afterthought to this thread, but recently I won a letter sent by Dickie Harington to his mother, the Hon Lady Harington, when he was at a cadet camp at Tidworth Pennings in 1916. Turns out that he's the great-grandfather of Kit Harington, one of the hunks in Game of Thrones, which I gather is about nine noble families fighting for control over the mythical lands of Westeros, while a forgotten race returns after being dormant for thousands of years. Lots of violence and nudity, I'm told.

 

Moonraker

Edited by Moonraker
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Never saw the programme either, i've  heard the same about it too.

What scenario turns a retained private family letter into something that can later be bought?
Medals i can understand, lumps of metal, but letters with personal content? I find it hard to fathom any family giving them away or selling them, but i suppose they must.
 

Derek.

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36 minutes ago, Derek Black said:

but letters with personal content? I find it hard to fathom any family giving them away or selling them, but i suppose they must.

 

There are many options for disposal if the family no longer can see a purpose for retaining them, one of which would be to bin them.

At least now they still exist and are cherished by someone.

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I am certainnly glad they survive and are treasured.

 

It's simply the process as to how they leave a family that i can't get my head around.

"Oh, grans old letters, i'll stick 'em on the internet for sale."

 

No doubt so much up for sale online of a personal nature comes from house clearance companies.
 

Cheers,

Derek.

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2 hours ago, Derek Black said:

 

No doubt so much up for sale online of a personal nature comes from house clearance companies.
 

Cheers,

Derek.

Spot on I think. House clearance companies are more likely to appreciate the collectibility, and value of such items more than many families. 

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Odd. The link in Post 1 worked for me this morning, but now it's "Link removed". It led to an old eBay page listing various items for sale and, IIRC, the vendor of one of these claimed the item he had listed might have been linked to someone wellish known, which another GWF member doubted. There were then a few more posts???

 

I realise that old links have suffered from various upgrades and even if the links work they can lead to dead web pages. Or perhaps there's been some belated moderating to reflect current sensitivities about querying eBay listings?

 

Zippy, the OP, last visited in on June 25. This thread seemed the best place to make my own somewhat inconsequential post which I didn't expect to attract more than passing interest.

 

Moonraker

Edited by Moonraker
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a collection of letters could be a good read and also the basis for a book (more money).

there was recently a seller on ebay that was selling off many letters, medals etc in single lots.

presumably to make more money from bidders, but at his over inflated prices, £24 for a letter, so on the assumption no one is going to pay that for a single low content letter I can se the balanc being binned.

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i recently purchased a large collection of letters to a man in the "Norsets" who came from Norwich, among the paperwork a large photograph album was mentioned, i asked the seller if he had seen this and he thought it had been burnt prior to his arrival to collect these letters!! I do get very annoyed at the greedy/ignorant  sellers who split photo albums/ bundles of letters etc 

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On eBay at the same time that I won the letter from Dickie Harington, the vendor was separately listing another from from him, also with a Wiltshire connection. I put in a bid that wasn't successful.

 

Moonraker

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/27/2017 at 16:17, Derek Black said:

I am certainnly glad they survive and are treasured.

 

It's simply the process as to how they leave a family that i can't get my head around.

"Oh, grans old letters, i'll stick 'em on the internet for sale."

 

No doubt so much up for sale online of a personal nature comes from house clearance companies.
 

Cheers,

Derek.

I've just won

 

this letter

 

on eBay. The vendor did not include a scan of the second page and nor shall I, as the letter was written to a girl-friend who's obviously being very much missed. Perhaps it was kept for this reason.

 

Back in the late 1990s, I bought a card sent by a soldier based at Codford in Wiltshire; it had a message in Welsh on it and I checked out some of the words in a dictionary and got nowhere. I had an aunt who lives in Flintshire, about 30 miles from where the card was sent, so I sent the words to her. The first two Welsh speakers couldn't translate them, but the third said it was an archaic form of the language which he understood. It turned out that the message was one of endearment - and one that others would have difficulty in reading.

 

Moonraker

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In one respect I think we should be grateful to sites like ebay for putting a value on this stuff, because now it is kept, perhaps in far from ideal circumstances, but I well remember seeing the many sepia photos of 'our boy' in skips, 60 to 70 death pennies going for scrap from junk dealers, even my B in L melting war medals for scrap to recycle as jewelry.

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On 7/28/2017 at 16:17, Moonraker said:

On eBay at the same time that I won the letter from Dickie Harington, the vendor was separately listing another from from him, also with a Wiltshire connection. I put in a bid that wasn't successful.

 

Moonraker

 

      Ddi you see the auctions lots of Harington materials that were at Chiswick Auctions earlier this year-  a couple of book sales back had a lot of the letters and ephemera. I think some went to John Martin, Ephemeramayfly-while Richard Ford, on ABE, has snaffled some as well. There was a lot of it,so keep them eyes peeled.

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On 11/08/2017 at 20:05, T8HANTS said:

... but I well remember seeing the many sepia photos of 'our boy' in skips, 60 to 70 death pennies going for scrap from junk dealers,

I believe that serious postcard collecting took off in the 1970s (one theory is that it was sparked after the Beeching cuts by interest in cards showing early 20th-century railway stations ). I'm not sure why all those thousands of cards now on sale at fairs (plus many more in collections) had been lurking, but I suspect they were only going for small sums. (There's quite a lot of good "military Wiltshire" cards on eBay at present, but at silly prices.)

 

      Ddi you see the auctions lots of Harington materials that were at Chiswick Auctions earlier this year-  a couple of book sales back had a lot of the letters and ephemera. I think some went to John Martin, Ephemeramayfly-while Richard Ford, on ABE, has snaffled some as well. There was a lot of it,so keep them eyes peeled.

I was only interested in the letter I mentioned in post 2 because it was written at a Wiltshire camp.

 

Moonraker

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Just a comment re post #7. There has been no intervention by Mods. Either an upgrade removed the link, which I am inclined to doubt, or some other wonderful technological process beyond my ken brought it to an end.

 

Keith

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  • 2 weeks later...
On ‎11‎/‎08‎/‎2017 at 19:05, Moonraker said:

Back in the late 1990s, I bought a card sent by a soldier based at Codford in Wiltshire; it had a message in Welsh on it and I checked out some of the words in a dictionary and got nowhere. I had an aunt who lives in Flintshire, about 30 miles from where the card was sent, so I sent the words to her. The first two Welsh speakers couldn't translate them, but the third said it was an archaic form of the language which he understood. It turned out that the message was one of endearment - and one that others would have difficulty in reading.

 

Moonraker

I have won a few German WW1 and 2 soldbuchs or wehrpass. the majority of the time you cant translate, Ive even given to an elderly German lady, but she said some were in regional 'dialect' that she did not recognise, I suppose a bit like Geordie or Cornish etc.

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