One case in an antique shop.
Fourteen years later, it's still one person doing the buying, the research, and the packing.
In May 2012 I rented a single display case in an antique shop in East Windsor, Connecticut, and filled it with what I had: a few helmets, a box of insignia, and some paperwork I'd been sorting for years. The intention was to pay for my own collecting habit. Within a year it was the job.
Today I buy and sell full time. Most of my inventory is American, from the First World War through Iraq, and most of it arrives from families rather than dealers: an attic in Enfield, a storage unit in Springfield, a cousin cleaning out a house after a funeral. I still keep a shelf of general antiques, because that's how the shop started and because interesting things turn up next to the interesting things.
What I look for
Complete, honest, and identifiable. A worn field jacket with a legible laundry number is worth more to me than a mint one with no history. I'd rather have a modest group that stays together than a spectacular single piece pulled out of its context.
Why provenance matters
A name turns an object back into a person. Once a uniform is separated from its paperwork, that connection is usually gone for good, and no amount of later research reliably puts it back. So when a group comes in, I keep it together, photograph it as it arrived, and record whatever the family can tell me before it fades.
Where I can document something, I document it. Where I can't, the listing says "attributed" or "unknown." I have turned down pieces I liked because the story didn't hold up, and I'll keep doing that.