I met an old guy this past weekend with his own museum.
He's the neighbor of a good friend, who was over for dinner. The topics of history and weapons came up, and he mentioned that he had a collection, himself.
He warned me that it wasn't the "modern stuff" that I like, but I wanted to have a look, anyway.

Down in his basement, past some SERIOUS doors, was a room that looked like a hunting lodge from the Middle Ages. Wood beams, massive Hearth, stone walls.
The most amazing thing I've ever seen.
MUCH more extensive than the Metropolitan Museum's collection. None of it was behind glass, it was all on the walls on hooks, so that you could handle the pieces.
1. The largest collection of Scottish "dirks" in the US (a thousand, at least).
2. Broad swords, daggers, foils, Claemores from the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
3. One broad sword with arabic on it was from the crusades.
4. Hundreds of muskets and rifles. Some were ornate, others battle-weapons with bayonets. Hessian, Brit, early American, French, you name it. 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
5. dozens of matched sets of duelling pistols.
6. Odd weapons made for ship-board fighting, and fending off mutinies: one was a double barrel shotgun that had a springloaded bayonet. another was a 4 barreled breach-loading "duck-foot" pistol, that shoots the rounds in a fan pattern.
7. the most modern weapons were a water cooled, belt-fed Vickers, and a WWII Jap Machinegun.

I handled them all (it's fun to dry-fire a pair of 400 year old duelling pistols).
I drooled.
The collection has to be worth, at the very least, 10 million dollars.

This fellow is also a prolific painter, and has 70 novels (historical fiction) published. My God...

ok...what's it gonna take for you to show me this magnificent place???

did you take any pictures???

I didn't have a camera.....[:(]
It's on Long Island, about 30 min. from NYC.

They don't make men like this guy, anymore.

i hear that. there's plenty of WWII vets around here, sometimes i'm in a position to see their collections (they're ALWAYS willing to show me!) and i love to hear all their stories. the most interesting gun i've seen was one that was brought home from the Civil War and passed down - IIRC, it was a brittish rifle, 1863.

i think the History Ch. should do a documentary on all the sick, unofficial arms collections in America!

...for now, i'm gonna go kiss up to SteyrAug, and see if i can make into his will!  [;)]



                  i ken spel.  [BD]