Sunday, October 16, 2011

The Harvey Withers and Richard Dellar Appreciation Society

Harvey Withers is a well known Antique British sword author (book: British Military Swords) and sword salesman (HW has multiple / spam sites; antiqueswordsonline.com, britishmilitaryswords.co.uk, plus sells as AnglianSwords on eBay). Richard Dellar is a self-proclaimed and I say nauseous Napoleonic sword expert. Thing is, personal dislikes aside, they get things very wrong. Worse is, they never admit it even when presented with substantive evidence and hard facts.

I say, if you buy a sword from Harvey Withers, you must be nuts. You will pay a lot more than you need to because of his name / reputation, yet you actually stand a good chance of being ripped off. I also say that if you believe everything Richard Dellar blurts out, your appreciation of antique swords will be substantially flawed.

Harvey Withers has sold jimmy'd swords (swords which been damaged to cover the fact they are fakes, such as gouged proof marks) and he has sold reproductions as authentic (such as reproduction WW2 NCO katanas and 1840 US wrist breakers), plus wrongly described swords he should know better about (such as describing a British infantry sword as a British cavalry sabre).

Richard Dellar is a bully of a "man" who trolls around sword forums making trouble for anyone he disapproves of / has an agenda against, he is someone who has been caught out with multiple eBay accounts (AquaeSulis, JJRunkel, etc.) which he uses for unlawful purpose, and someone who has completely got it wrong about a certain French inspection mark (poincon) which he then abuses to claim certain French swords remained in French army service after Waterloo.

They refuse to accept their mistakes because they are both pompous fools with bad agendas / attitudes.

These blogs are therefore a public service a) to try and stop Harvey Withers from selling fakes / repros and other fraudulent swords and getting away with it, b) to try and get Richard Dellar to accept the documented facts regarding certain important Napoleonic French swords, and c) to show antique sword collectors that so-called experts can not be trusted, especially when they are selling swords! Sure, my blog about Harvey Withers being a wanted / convicted criminal in Florida is tongue in cheek but a) it does look like him and he has the same name, b) HW needs to be less pompous IMHO anyway, and I am sure this helps!

An offer to Harvey Withers and Richard Dellar;

If Harvey Withers would a) admit certain identified swords he has sold / is selling are reproductions, b) admit swords he has been caught selling have been jimmy'd, c) remove them from his sales site / contact the buyers to offer them a refund / compensation, and d) agree to properly deal with fake sword advisories / notifications in the future (we all make mistakes, but only to good admit to them), then I would gladly remove my warnings about him here.

If Richard Dellar would a) agree to terminate all of his unlawful additional eBay accounts and admit what he did was wrong, b) would agree to stop being a forum bully / troll, and c) agree to look and act on (undo the damage he has done) regarding the hard facts that certain important French inspection mark poincon, then I would gladly remove my warnings about him here.

Me, judge and jury?

If either Harvey Withers and / or Richard Dellar refute any of the above accusations, I would be more than happy to prove what I say is true / discuss this openly with them, no problem. They can contact me and discuss this by email: thailandswords@gmail.com

Have a nice day.