Rick, I started around 1978 or so, and just sort of continued. I did buy a couple collections of (mostly) West Coast African along the way, but most of the things came along at gun shows--maybe one or two per show. Went to
a lot of shows in those old days....
And, since there was little in print on identification, practically none of us
knew what we were looking at! That worked both ways--for the buyer,
the purchase was mostly blind ("Is that thing in Stone?"). And for the seller,
the buyers for unidentified ethnic arms were lots scarcer than, say buyers
of Bowie knives or German military rifles (both of which I collected, at one
time or another.)
It helped quite a lot to have a partner (Hank Reinhardt) who had studied
ancient arms AND ethnographic arms. I think Hank knew every medieval sword in the world by its first name!
Hank and I sold our business (reproduction medieval swords, renaissance swords, etc.) at the end of 1995, and I picked up very little in the way of arms in this field after then.
Thanks,
Bill
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