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Collecting militaria from Iraq

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf's passport accompanied the Iraqi information minister on diplomatic assignments and vacations. But Comical Ali, as he became known after his defiant war press conferences, is no longer a representative of Iraq and his passport sits in a small box in Oak Creek, Wis.

"It's probably one of the best things I've got," said Craig Luther, whose collection of so-called militaria includes several passports and documents from Iraq's 50 most wanted leaders. "Anything that is from the [former] Iraqi leadership or has their signature on it is going to increase the value of the item." (Ali surrendered to U.S. troops last year and has since been released.)

When coalition forces advanced across the desert last year, many Iraqi soldiers shed their uniforms and the accoutrements of their army. But many of these items didn't get hung up in closets or stowed in a cupboard. In fact, many uniforms, medals and other articles aren't in Iraq at all. They are in the possession of collectors around the world.

"If you hit the right guy who is looking, you can set your own price," said Marty Vaughan, an Ohio-based collector who wrote "An Introduction to the Military Badges, Insignia, Patches and Medals of Iraq" and who trades militaria online. "Collecting can be pretty competitive."

The "death decks" of Iraq's 52 most wanted are common and can be purchased for a few dollars on Web sites like eBay. But more personal mementoes from the Iraq campaign can fetch far higher prices.

A badge from the women's Baath party sold online for $31, a military map, $50; two student identity cards, $26; a field marshal's uniform with medals, $300; a Fedayeen combat belt, $30; and a maroon Republican Guard beret with a gold National Eagle pin, $74.

Vaughan has more than 500 items from Operation Iraqi Freedom, including some of Uday Hussein's personal gold leaf, linen stationery, several uniforms and various medals. He has an ornate 11-inch black-lacquered plate with an etched picture of Saddam Hussein. The plate came through an Iraqi contact for $50, but Vaughan estimates its value at more than $500.

The pride of his collection, though, is a knife and fork from one of Saddam Hussein's palaces.

They have a Republican Eagle (Hussein's presidential symbol) pressed into one side of the handle. "They are very, very rare pieces," he said. A full set of the silverware is available on eBay, with an appraised value of $8,700.

Collectors said a series of high profile cases a year ago initially stemmed the flood of Iraqi items coming into the country.

In April 2003, at the height of the ground war, inspectors at Dulles International Airport found 12 Iraqi paintings, a gas mask and an identification badge from the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait in the bags of a journalist. The journalist pleaded guilty to one count of smuggling and received a $2,000 fine.

During the same month, an unnamed U.S. soldier allegedly tried to ship a gold-plated rifle, pistol and AK-47 assault rifle taken from an Iraqi government facility to Fort Stewart, Ga. The items were seized at London's Heathrow Airport.

There are rules governing ordnance, war trophies, artwork and artifacts, and soldiers are prevented from returning with most types of firing or exploding weapons, but they can bring back uniforms, medals, badges and similar articles from a theater of war as long as they have a receipt from an Iraqi vendor.

"I've got three Iraqi bayonets I'm bringing back," said Spec. Richard Murphy, a reservist serving west of Baghdad. "They cost about $5 apiece."

Collectors, who rely on returning soldiers, foreign traders and other collectors for items, said the continued deployment of troops in Iraq will only increase the amount of militaria on the market. "During Desert Storm [in 1990], the Internet was still in its infancy," said Luther, 34, who once collected military artifacts as a field historian for the Army. "Now soldiers in the field can check a site like eBay and see what they have."

Collecting and marketing souvenirs from wars is probably as old as war itself; in fact the Center for Military History reports most museums began as large collections of such items.

"It wasn't until Grenada and Panama that the Army realized that war trophies and historical artifacts made up the majority of the items in museums today," said Major Kristen Carle, a U.S. Army spokeswoman in an e-mailed statement. "From the perspective of a systematic approach to historically recovering items for museums, the Army came up with a system. Military history detachments are trained to pick up artifacts.

"Units during Desert Storm were restricted to three historical artifacts [equipment and weapons] for display, based on the return of a unit with excessive amounts of war trophies," she said.

Luther, a junior high school history teacher, started collecting militaria when World War II veterans along his boyhood paper route gave him souvenirs from their service. During the Gulf War, Luther worked in a military history detachment, officially collecting Iraqi artifacts like complete uniforms for museum mannequin displays.

"I made a deal with my commanding officer that I could keep some of the extra items for my collection," Luther said. He now draws on a wide network of collectors around the world and Internet auctions to sustain his collection.

"Any money that I make selling extra items goes right back to funding the collection," he said. "It is all about the collection."

Murphy, the reservist west of Baghdad, said he is planning to bring back an Iraqi medal he purchased that was awarded for "Iraq's victory over the U.S." in the Gulf War.

"I've [also] got a full Iraqi military uniform with Saddam's rank and some Iraqi medals," he said, "Figure it'll come in handy next Halloween."

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