Ah Annie, welcome to my world. I always get angy at the sale of medals, and have said so on a number of other threads.
Me too !! Breaks my heart to think what these men have done to earn these medals and then for them to be sold for the almighty dollar !! Don't get me started !!
Should be illegal to sell them. No doubt there's all sorts of alternative views but it would sort things out!
Trouble is, nearly all of them are British Commonwealth issued, so even if Canada did ban the sale of them (and there have been private member's bills by Nova Scotia MP Peter Stouffer) it wouldn't have any effect on the UK or other countries. Consecutive governments in Canada have also said that medals are private property and they won't be legislating such items. I've seen it happen over and over. It's families or estates who sell the medals, because their options are either 'handing them down' (what happens when the line runs out?), donating them to a museum (tax receipt, good only for 29% on your taxes), or selling them for a few hundred dollars or more (ability to send the kids to college, new roof ... whatnot). I know this because I do what Dave "Any Medal off Ebay" Thomson does, only my methods & means differ from his, even though our goals are precisely the same. And there's always room for more people to pitch in and help. It costs, but it's worth it. If we had had more people to help with the Simmons medals last November, we might have brought them home to Esquimalt rather than have them sold to a British collector, just because the auction house ran out of patience with the raising of funds. x.x That one still stings.
