Wilson History & Research Center

Robby Wilson, Founder OUR CHARTER – TO LOCATE, ACQUIRE, AUTHENTICATE AND DISSEMINATE an example of every single designed, approved, produced and modified military headpiece from each country, regime, and geographical area during every war, dispute or period which occurred during the 20th century. No small feat when one realizes that the number has been estimated to be as high as 10 million headpieces! - One year ago in an open invitation to you and other visitors to our web site, I advised: <blockquote> “We have remaining only nine million, nine hundred and ninety thousand pieces to go! A lifetime of work awaits us. As our second year begins, we ask your help. <a href="/contact">Contact us</a> if you have pieces to sell or donate. We can explain to you the tax advantages of donations. But most of all watch our web site, enjoy its growth and be a part of its accuracy. As pieces go on the site, give us your feedback. Are they correctly identified? If not, straighten us out. We will give you a contributing author acknowledgement. Do you have one of a kind pieces which you would like to display? If so, we would like to include them in our web site and studies. In fact, we want this web site to become a basis for research, so you may see multiple items nearly exact in similarity, but for us, the catalogue of existing pieces, no matter how similar is very important in grading quality, authenticity and placing it in history. So join us and be a part of our team.” </blockquote> I can proudly report to you that you have joined us by the thousands. We launched our third generation site in mid December 2008. In that fraction of a month we saw just over 200 hits; one year later, we found that December was our strongest showing of the year, with 15,555 hits! I want to thank you for your support. We have friends in over 90 countries, and each day brings a higher and higher hit count. To thank you for your steady support, we now present to you the fifth generation of our web site. This site is designed to be the backbone of many requested features. For example we now provide you with the ability to search by artifact number; this makes researching much more convenient. You simply go to the information box at the bottom of the artifact display page and write down the artifact number. Later, if you want to refer back to the same piece you can enter the number in the search box and you are brought back to the artifact you wish to see. Using the number can be very useful as well when you are contacting us so that we can know exactly which piece you are referring to. We have also included another new aspect for those deeper researchers; this is our FEATURED HEADGEAR section. Displayed prominently on our home page, this new section focuses your attention on pieces we feel are significant additions to our collections. As a treat, and to kick off our new FEATURED HEADGEAR section, we offer a true U.S. Paratroop M-2 D-Day and Market Garden authenticated 506 PIR Fox company helmet. Named to and worn by Armand Beauchamp who was KIA in market garden. Provenance on this piece is without equal as is its role in history. We know you will enjoy viewing it and will be happy to field any questions you might have. More so we will be offering more in the way of education, as our podcasts come on line this year. We have conducted two Knowledge Share conferences this year with six of the leading collectors in WWII cloth and steel headgear. Having taped all sessions, and more important, having focused the sessions on timely issues, we will offer you a chance to be a one on one participant in personal lectures given by the people who write the books. It will be the next best thing to being there. Additionally we will be offering at least one foray into the print media as well. Let’s not forget that 2009 transformed us into a public institution with our receipt of the 501c3 charitable institution status. This allows us to continue the growth of the foundation, not only through purchase but through the receipt of gifts, not necessarily money. In other words, we will seek out those people who wish to preserve the collection that has taken them a lifetime to aggregate and would only take an auction house 30 minutes to piece out. We have many tools available to us in cases such as this and I would personally like to discuss them with those of you who feel that your collection belongs to the interested public and that you are simply a person who is caring for it during this time. This brings me to 2010 and our goals for the year. Obviously, we have grown faster than the number of pieces on the web site. In fact we acquired nearly 4000 pieces last year, although over 1000 of them will not be in our possession until the early part of this year. While we feel that we can be more selective with the acquisitions we make through direct purchase, we feel that we have more than enough momentum to keep the numbers on a continual upswing through the gifting process, which is an integral part of acquisition. Another exciting addition in 2010 will be the “COLLECTIONS,” which is divided into two categories “acquired” and “personally held.” We will attempt to develop over time the catalogue of all pieces that fit our Charter, first by publishing along with the acquired piece the collector or dealer from whom we acquired the piece. The “ACQUIRED COLLECTIONS” offers the opportunity to see where we obtained our pieces and it gives you the opportunity to compare their pieces with yours or the one you are thinking about buying. Seeing things for first time can be unnerving, particularly when you may think that you have stumbled upon the find of the year. Being able to look at pieces we bought from experienced and knowledgeable dealers will help the collector in making the often expensive decision, to buy or not to buy. On the other hand in our “PERSONAL COLLECTIONS” category we will offer the complete collections of many collectors whose names are not common household words, yet these collectors possess a wealth of knowledge and many unseen and unknown of pieces that no one has ever seen. Pieces, which while rumored to exist in the form of a reproduction or being passed off as authentic, that are in fact as real and right as any historic artifact may be. I have always taken the position that we do not have to buy every single piece of 20th century headgear in order to display every single piece of 20th century headgear. So with the list of volunteers growing for their collections to become a part of our web museum, we will be going to them to photograph their items and conduct complete historical analysis of each piece offering them as a part of the total WHRC historic presentation and thus giving you a deeper and richer experience. It is with great pride that I can announce to you today that renowned SS collector Willi Schumacher will lead off the collections category of the WHRC site. Join us mid-February for a glimpse of this exciting SS uniform and headpiece collection, considered by many to be the best in the world. One day we will close the catalogue of 20th century headpieces and when we do it is our goal to state unequivocally that we have found and listed every piece. Finally, 2010 will be a watershed year for SS helmets. A new technology has arisen as a result of the near perfect SS helmet reproductions that are being made and sold as original and authentic. By employing the use of XRF (x-ray fluorescence) technology, which is a stable means of determining metal alloy and composition percentages through the use of x-rays, the collectors of SS steel helmets will be offered the opportunity to test and certify the authenticity of their collections. The product from this science is indisputable. We have had the pleasure of being a part of a demonstration, and while some of our most “prized” pieces didn’t stand up to the challenge, the ones that did are now authenticated for all time. This technology is going to be very important and WHRC endorses its use and endorses “XRFacts,” the company that offers the authentications. As proof of our commitment to this technology, we offer a treat for those of you attending the Show of Shows this year. We will be residing at the XRFacts table acompanied by a couple of our SS Helmets as will a few others. One of our pieces is the much discussed Heimwehr Danzig helmet, a relic which was the topic of several forums last summer. Having acquired this controversial piece,we are bringing it to the SOS for you to insepect yourself. During the SOS, we want you to tell us, is it real or is it an imposter? At the end of the show XRFacts will test it and announce the results during the last hour of the show. For those of you who won’t be there at the end, we will release the results on our web site as well as the XRFacts web site. Additionally, we will be testing the SS double decal M-40 which was formerly displayed at the Museum in Averanches, FranceWith this kind of technology, our collections and their value in history can only become more stable. That’s it for this year’s wrap up. Thanks for the many hands of friendship which have helped us so far along this exciting journey. And, lest I forget, “join us and become a part of our team.”

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#<Slug:0x7fed6ecb80a0> Wilson History & Research Center - Year Two

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