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Without official documentation is all just heresay. Great story but carries no provenance. How can a US 1911 be a battlefield pickup that term is generally reserved for enemy weapons.
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My grandfather brought back an M1911 from the battle of Okinawa. It's a battlefield pickup. He dictated the story which I typed out. He is going to sign it and have it notarized. It will have the serial number, a short description of the gun as well. Is that sufficient provenance for the gun?
If there's another forum for this question please let me know.
Without official documentation is all just heresay. Great story but carries no provenance. How can a US 1911 be a battlefield pickup that term is generally reserved for enemy weapons.
No offense intended, but ditto. Provenance would be some kind of official government document that shows an official trail of history/possession. Notarized documents are not proof of anything beyond that a particular person(s) made a statement. There's nothing to stop anyone from paying a WWII vet to sign a document and getting it notarized. The notary doesn't care about or have anything to do with the veracity of the contents of a document; they only witness that the document was produced freely without coercion by the person(s) that produced it, and they confirm the identity of the producer(s). For example, they confirm that a document was produced by John Smith and that he did so not under duress; they don't confirm the accuracy of the information in the document beyond the identity of the producer(s).
If it was a simple as a notarized statement, the collector's market would be replete with fraudulent notarized statements about how every Luger or K98 out there was an SS issue weapon.
As a collector, the notarized statement would prove to me that your grandfather did indeed make the statement, but not that the statement was true.