THE ARMY-NAVY E (ANE) MEDAL

I am not certain when I started collecting Army-Navy E (ANE) award stuff. Sure, it is all great World War II material and often you find emblems for the ANE stuff included in war bond advertising. Since I avidly collect the bonds, it is probably this connection that got me started. I do not often mention this little specialty of mine here in the Gram because of the requirement for numismatic content and there is not really much of that associated with the ANE award program.

The most common items found are silver pins in the shape of the ANE award program emblem. Though silver and mostly struck, it is still a bit of a stretch to call them numismatic. The one real hook is the three inch medal that was created for some (really only a very few) of the companies.

The only one of these medals that you will find is for the Curtis Wright Corporation. These medals are really common, but it has not always been that way. Before the Internet, they were really hard to find.

The first one that I found for my collection came from a grouchy dealer in aviation artifacts. At the time I was seriously collecting aviation stocks and bonds. I do not know how I found this fellow, but he put out a very interesting list and I bought a few nice certificates from him.

Then in one of his lists he had one of these Curtis Wright medals and, of course, he wanted what I considered to be a very high price for it. I agonized. Then I thought about it and agonized some more. I cannot remember all of the details, but he would not accept calls and had a bunch of other real strange policies. Of course, you know that I could not resist and I bought it. I suppose that I am happy that I did because it helped keep me interested. You also know from the way the story is going that they are much cheaper now on ebay. Yep.

Eventually lightening struck. On ebay I found the illustrated Tacoma Boat Builders medal. It is clearly in the style of the Curtis-Wright medal. The situation with the Tacoma medal was quite different from the Wright medal. The opposite in fact. This time the seller put it up with a very low starting price (but no buy it now). I put in a serious bid. Serious and in big. I always say that there is no good experience like your own. I had never seen anything except the Wright medal so I wanted to own this one and I do! I am sure that my bid was to the great surprise of the underbidder and to the delight of the seller, but it came home.

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