Treasure is everywhere. It is in garage sales, antique stores, flea markets, estate sales and pawnshops. At least that is the sense you might get from watching TV shows such as the long running PBS series Antiques Roadshow, or History Channel’s new Pawn Stars and American Pickers. The former often has people bringing in something they inherited or found at a garage sale, only to discover… it is worth a lot of money.

The latter shows have the "hosts" typically buying items from people, explaining how it really isn’t worth as much as the seller thinks, only to later turn to the camera and gloat (like an eighth-grade boy who caught a glimpse of the girl’s locker room) about the profit they’ll make by reselling an item. It is enough to convince the average viewer to set up a pawnshop or get an old van to scour the countryside for treasure.

As a critique of the media, it needs to be stressed that these shows are highly edited to increase their respective entertainment value. You don’t see the rest of the time these people spend just trying to scrape out an existence. And even PBS’ Antiques Roadshow only rarely shows those who were truly burnt with a fake. In this case it really isn’t much of a surprise. Who would agree to go on air to show how their believed to be original piece of antiquity was a fake that was made in China only last year, and admit on TV that they paid serious dollars believing it to be real? Not many people, which is why these shows rarely offer these examples.

This is all very important to consider when deciding to collect militaria, let alone to even consider dealing in militaria. As a collector for about 30 years, this reporter has found many treasures, but I’ve also been burned a few times. I’m not proud to admit that I’ve bought a fake or two, and any serious collector that tells you otherwise is either the exception to the rule, or is flat out lying. The problem is that where big money is involved, there will be those looking to score big with fakes, frauds and copies.

At this point militaria is really a big money hobby when compared to coin collecting, stamp collecting or other memorabilia collecting. It might not be as big money as high-end art or car collecting, but for the size of the hobby, it is fairly big money at least for anything of quality and rarity. Going to a military collectibles show without at least a few hundred dollars in your pocket won’t get you very far, but as with any antique this is to be expected.

What most new collectors never expect is that there are so many fakes, but the simple fact is that it is very easy to make a good-looking reproduction or copy and pass it off as the real deal. The Internet has also changed the way people find items as well, but this is a double-edged sword in many ways. Sites such as eBay are goldmines, if you know what to look for, so getting to the goldmine requires navigating a minefield first. You need to ask for good photos, find out the return policy and when in doubt you should still get a second opinion. The same could be said of any online dealer site, and remember that lifetime guarantees are only worth the paper they’re printed on, because trying to return an item years or even months after you bought something can be difficult at best. And remember that dealers are in business, so you can’t expect bargains most of the time. Those dealers that sell items way below market value should be avoided for obvious reasons – in other words, if it looks too good to be true…

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