Edward .F.Timmers

[Walt's Daughter]

Here is Eric's reply to us. In this letter he is addressing Michael Brodhead (his co-worker at Office of History) and myself.

 

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Marion & Mike,

 

Attached is an image of the DUI of the 81st Engineer Battalion that we have

in the museum collection. As I mentioned in the earlier email, this is a

reproduction, and I have found no outside confirmation that this is correct

design.

 

A bit of background is in order. I am not intimately familiar with the ins

and outs of DUI collecting, but I do know that one guy named Charles Aresta

makes reproductions for collectors and others. They are not deceptive in any

way - he marks them with his name - so everyone knows they are not original.

The reason people acquire Aresta's DUIs are to 'stand in' for extremely rare

originals - in other words, a collector may buy an Aresta DUI to fill the

space in his collection that would be otherwise be empty due to the scarcity

of the original. The man who donated the DUIs we have was a big enthusiast

of Aresta's stuff to fill his 'blank' spaces, so we have a lot of them.

 

Needless to say, Aresta is highly controversial in the collector community.

To my knowledge, every Aresta insignia is accurate in terms of design, color,

etc., just not original. In other words, I have never heard of Aresta making

up a design on his own. On the other hand, I could not prove that he hasn't

made up one either - all the other Aresta's DUIs I have seen have been

confirmed in design and color by other references.

 

So I am passing the image along with the above caveats. Let me know if I can

answer any other questions.

 

-Eric

 

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With that in mind, I am attaching said image.