THE JAG FILE

TO WHOM DO THESE RELICS BELONG?

Hardly a week goes by that I don’t read a heart-string-pulling story about a “Purple Heart return-ed to family…” And for a good reason — these types of story are full of emotion and ego, two things people outside of the militaria like to read about. Even within our hobby, though, opinions are split in relation to returning items to families. Regardless, the argument for returning relics or not tends to ignore the basic question: “Who actually owns the item?”

THERE ARE REASONS FOR LETTING ITEMS GO

I am a collector of military relics with provenance linking the items to the