I’ve placed a few orders with Coleman’s and can happily recommend them. I’ll link to the blue bag on their site that I want but can’t justify the pricetag …yet.
I was at American Science & Surplus last weekend but there’s scarcely any military surplus and what they have is sort of expensive.
I see a lot of mil stuff in my amateur radio and electronics interest events. There’s bound to be some green gear peeking through the heaps in the flea markets and swapmeets.
I assume that after the Second World War (and perhaps Korea and Vietnam), there was plenty of surplus military gear available, which could supply all of those Army/Navy surplus stores. I remember there was one in the next town over from where I grew up and I Googled for it; the Facebook page said it was started in 1920 but the most recent posts were from 2017 and the website is dead, so I’m assuming the store is closed as well.
I see something claiming to be the Army/Navy store I used to go to as a kid in the 1980s still exists in a new location, but the contents is nothing the same. The new store seems to be almost entirely t-shirts.
This is where the old store was for several decades.
True. I have no idea how much “stuff” is made these days or was made for the various Middle East conflicts. I also don’t know if maybe stuff from the WWII/Korean era was made better and thus more appropriate for reselling. Everything else is made worse these days, no reason to assume military stuff (tent stakes, canvas bags, boots, etc) is a notable exception.
At least in the USA, the whole point of “Mil-spec” is to hermetically prevent the vendors from cheap-shitting the product by defining absolutely everything about how the product is made and what materials are used in it. So a true Mil-spec e.g. tent stake should be as good as it ever was. Should.
Now whether DOD has cheapified the real Mil-spec on tent stakes since 1950 is a different question I have no answer to. Nor whether DoD is still bothering to get its tent stakes per a Mill-spec at all vs just buying commercial whatever tent stakes. Nor whether the goods in the bin at your local “surplus” store or website that have Mil-spec style stenciling on them are the real thing or are just another Chinese counterfeit good made as badly as possible.
That’s my thought. Between the military’s increasing reliance on 3rd party private vendors for other things and maybe just deciding that they don’t NEED a coat to be good for 10-15 years so cheaper made (and less expensive) is fine there could just be less stuff made worth reselling. I’m not saying this as fact, just something that wouldn’t surprise me.
Me neither. Not a bit.
During my time in USAF, basically the Reagan years, I was surprised at how well some mil-spec personal issue stuff was made and how poorly other things were. Some real high durability and some cheap crap. Despite all being official issue through official channels.
One of their challenges even then was that they insisted everything be US-made from US-sourced intermediate goods and insofar as possible, US-sourced raw materials. Which really drove up the cost of such things and paradoxically forced big orgs like the US Army to depend on rafts of little Mom & Pop factories for basics like boots.
I can only assume the en-cheapification has only grown in the intervening ~40 years.
Closest I have is a 1950s (?) era Department of Mines 611 Permissible Electric Flashlight
I do really like the more “quirky” stuff …
e.g. Swiss Army surplus … This Alpenflage jacket, I really use it a lot … goes well with a jean 
… plus I do like the WWII / Nazi angle of the pattern
I was lucky and got an unissued one
and I love this rucksack (too big for an every-day’er … but lovely for bigger hauls (and dirt-cheap when I got mine)
I had (or had) a seabag that I bought in an army/navy store in Kalispell that I used for years to store an old canvas tent that my wife and I used when we went camping.
Oddly enough we were just talking about that tent, noting that we haven’t been camping together since the fall of 2019 – over 5 years now. We also noted that we hadn’t seen that old seabag in several years and were wondering if it inadvertently got tossed out when we were doing a big clear-out of the garage. If I still have it – it would be buried in piles of random stuff in the corner of the garage now – it’s probably the only actual US military surplus item I own. I never served and so never had the chance to acquire anything.
I would like to find some actual military MRE’s to keep at work as we often suffer power outages and have no way to heat or cook our lunches. All I’ve been able to find are Chinese knockoffs or stuff that’s been expired for years.
My wife has her father’s rank patches as well as little collar pins he had on his dress blues from his time in Vietnam. I don’t think that counts though.
I’ve followed the Youtuber Steve1989MREInfo for several years - he’s a guy who eats and reviews MRE meals from all over the world and from all time periods, including stuff from World War II and even earlier. He has a big cult following because of the interesting subject matter and his very soothing voice which is almost ASMR quality.
Inspired by his videos I tried a number of MREs from both the US and other countries (France, Spain, and Lithuania.) They’re all pretty damn good. A lot of American veterans complain about MREs and maybe the old ones did suck, but the modern ones are pretty good. France and Spain have a variety of delicious canned meat, fish, even squid, pate and cheese spread, all excellent. The Lithuanian rations have plastic pouches filled with a stew made from pork or beef and buckwheat - extremely tasty.
Back in high school when I was “edgy” I got myself a Soviet great coat. It actually was a great coat, really warm, knee length wool. I wonder where that is now?
When I was painting sets in San Diego I’d buy surplus combat boots, cut the top parts to turn them into shoes, and wear them as work shoes. Didn’t give a shit if they got covered in paint, at $10 a pop. This was a job where we painted the floors on the regular. Shoes changed color often.
Back in high school, I had a surplus olive drab winter jacket supposedly from the Italian army. It was a gift so I have no idea if it really was but the zipper pull was on the opposite side.
The M65 olive drab field jacket was the standard winter jacket for 1970s American males.
Later, as the supply of surplus diminished, I only saw war surplus stores outside army installations. The one in Tacoma had shelves groaning with white bunny boots.
I wish I could find a pic online, but one memorable item once available through catalog order were surplus trousers from Franco’s army. The seat reinforcement was a pattern of concentric stitching circles like a target, with the bullseye on the anus.
That’s probably the one that I mentioned having (in the early 90s) earlier in the thread. Mine was used (some guy’s name was stencilled on the left breast area) and I doubt I paid more than $10 for it. Used it for years.
Does ammunition count? I have a lot of “milsurp” ammo, mainly 7.62X51.
Many years ago when I first went camping in the desert I bought a pair of German folding goggles. I thought they would come in handy if there was a sandstorm. In reality they were really cheap and didn’t fit well enough to keep sand out if there had been a storm.
40 or more years ago when I was living in Boston I shopped at an Army/Navy store and bought a navy blue greatcoat that was great for winters and wore it till all the closer toggles wore off.
I also bought an olive drab laundry bag, and good golly but that sucker is tough! I still use it, and other than losing the draw cord and managing somehow to put a small hole in one side (which never gets bigger) it’s still in great shape, capable of being stuffed near to bursting with clothes and then tossed down the stairs from the second and then first floor to do laundry in the basement, and still be in fine condition. I think that bag will outlive me.
When I was a little kid I’d fantasize about the Army Surplus stuff advertised in Popular Mechanics and Popular Science. Helicopters: $100, Jeeps: $50, etc. Don’t remember the exact prices, but they were crazy low.