What is your rarest item in your collection?

Title says it all.


Experimental USMC urban reversible shirt. Only seen it once for sale so far.

Interesting question.

I have many rare patches such as a WWII armored division patch that only 3 are known to exist (Including mine) and I have several DCU pathces on velcro that are "hard to come by".

Uniform wise would probably be my CU shirt named to an EOD qualified 82nd ABN / 52nd EOD soldier with all original insignia.

Gear wise is a modified LC2 canteen cover with the pouch on the front for the IR Strobe lights.

Andrew

Honestly, I don't think I have anything rare since I collect current items. In 10 or 15 years, some of them might would become rare, who knows!

I have to say my rarest item as of yet is my full set of AOR1/Digi2, with a bunch of pouches and a boonie cap







Oh yeah...and my Snow MARPAT pack cover

I'm in the same boat as Jeremy -- most of my stuff is fairly current so I don't guess it's very rare at the moment; but in a few years, perhaps.

Hmmm.... this is a difficult question to answer. If we think of the term "rarest" to mean produced in the least numbers, that's one thing. And probably the most common way to think of it.

But Arch has shown another one, which is a common enough uniform BUT named to someone very specific who has some sort of historical standing. In terms of rarity, that's pretty much as rare as one can get.

Yet another kind of rarest uniform is a super mint or unissued condition version of something which is rarely seen in such condition. An example of that would be Bundeswehr Splittermuster (any piece). I've seen hundreds of pieces for sale, but only one that appeared to be unissued. Even Grade 1 is damned near impossible to find.

Finally, there are things which are produced in fairly large numbers BUT are near impossible to get a hold of. At least right now. For example, Swiss TAZ90 is extremely hard to get, but it isn't really rare as there are tens of thousands of these uniforms in use right now. And at some point the Swiss will sell them off by the container load, which means a TAZ90 is rare now but someday w'll all probably have 5 sets

Just some thoughts for people to ponder

Steve

Using the common definition of "rare", which is small surviving numbers in collector's hands, I think the bulk of my rarest stuff is Bundeswehr. I have two items which tie for rarest because I've never seen or know of any other examples. In fact, I've never even had a conversation with anybody that has even heard of these items. Certainly I wouldn't have known of their existence if I hadn't stumbled upon them:


1957 trails "Broad Splinter" infantry jacket (some bonehead used black marker to fill in white offset shapes).


1960 (er... I think that's right!) trials "Broad Splinter" reversible snow camouflage top

Wowza...I have never seen those before. Outstanding!

I have never seen either of those patterns before. Very cool, especially the snow pattern.

Steve,

Those are absolutely stunning!!!


Cheers,
Ben

I dont know my rarest, but its probably my Czech cloud

My rarest item is from DDR, I dont know if rarest or weirdest or funniest, this traffic belt looks like from a old 50s SciFi movie.
JR

Nice tread,

there's some pretty amazing items in here, most of it i don't have

Steve made some pretty good points.
I guess is very difficult to point "the" rarest piece, here are a few of the items i think are the rarest in my collection

Brazilian 1st camouflage pattern


Iranian "pazdaran" - suicide bombers uniform

misanthropic_gods wrote:

I've been looking for one of those AOR hats for quite a while. Any advice on where I should go to acquire one?

Brazilian 1st pattern... wow! The pazdaran obviously is a rare thing and in new condition! Then again, who would want to collect a used one. Yech

Steve

Guys,

All nice pieces and I would love to have any of the camo items in my collection.
Unfortunately most of my stuff is not particularly rare. I live in hope that one day I'll stumble across a "find of a lifetime".... as I suppose most of us do. Although, I believe that some of you already have.


cheers,
Ben.

Mine would have to be a marked and ID'd set of WW2 "frogskin" Army coveralls. With the internal suspenders still intact, which is in itself pretty rare since most were cut out by the users..

Beautiful.

In modern uniform items I have 2 that would fall into the "rare" catagory.
1. Bundeswehr late 50s splinter pattern camo jacket & pants. I think I've got 2 jumps in them.
2. Late 70s 5 color - "chocklate chip" - desert camo pants and field jacket. Got these from a friend who was in the unit that field tested them. both new, unworn. Pattern adopted, but not mfg'd/issued till 1990 for Desert Storm 1.
For other items, I have an early Walther P.38 that is single action and in 30 Luger (7.65mm) caliber. Pistol is new, got it in 1968 from the vet who brought it back.
Probably a bunch of other stuff in the pile, but these are the ones that come to mind.
Sarge

2. Late 70s 5 color - "chocklate chip" - desert camo pants and field jacket. Got these from a friend who was in the unit that field tested them. both new, unworn. Pattern adopted, but not mfg'd/issued till 1990 for Desert Storm 1.

I would love to have one of these Sarge , can we see pics ??

I'd also love to see pics of that, as well as the BW splinter stuff. I suspect the 6 color jacket is in the Transitional (RDF) cut. I have one like this in my collection, though it is tarted up with non-original badging.

Steve

Sarge wrote:In modern uniform items I have 2 that would fall into the "rare" catagory.
1. Bundeswehr late 50s splinter pattern camo jacket & pants. I think I've got 2 jumps in them.
2. Late 70s 5 color - "chocklate chip" - desert camo pants and field jacket. Got these from a friend who was in the unit that field tested them. both new, unworn. Pattern adopted, but not mfg'd/issued till 1990 for Desert Storm 1.
For other items, I have an early Walther P.38 that is single action and in 30 Luger (7.65mm) caliber. Pistol is new, got it in 1968 from the vet who brought it back.
Probably a bunch of other stuff in the pile, but these are the ones that come to mind.
Sarge

This P38 is very interesting! Can see pics?
JR

I don't have any photos of the uniforms and my camera died some time ago, so --
Here is the P.38.
Sarge