The "Infamous" "Medal detective"

[Chris Boonzaier]

This guy Zachariah Fike seems to be pretty devisive?

The Press seems to love him, but the collectors seem to hate him?

The Press seems to think he is a hero, reuniting lost medals with families and stopping eveil collectors from buying them but getting laws passed forbidding their sale

Collectors seems to think he is using his "fame" to gather a collection, knowing only a tiny portion will ever find their way to the families (who may have sold them in the first place), Also claims that he abuses his position by accepting donations etc, which will probably never leave his filing cabinets... and that he is building a collection, while at the same time trying to get laws passed to forbid the sale of medals...

 

Basically the MArtin Shkreli of the collecting world....

 

Any thoughts?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-5c1940d8-5f8f-4fd4-ac12-e216184a9a72

[Paul C]

He is a world class A-hole and is working with a California Congressman (no surprise there) to get a law passed that would ban the buying and selling of the Purple Heart. He thinks all collectors are in it for the money. I am up on the U.S. Militaria forum and I can't tell you how many times someone found military decorations in the garbage or the family has sold the medals. There is a collectors market in the U.S. because the families no longer want the medals.

Many collectors spend hours trying to research the name on the back of a Purple Heart. Most collectors I know honor, not just the medal and what is represents, but also the man who earned it.

[Ulsterman]

This guy is either an uber-patriot con man or a con man using emotive patriotism. Word on the street is he has hopes to get the sale banned, then lobby Congress to fund his Purple Heart Memorial Center and pay himself to be Executive Director of course.

He has mastered the process of using modern US media to create " false" but feel good stories-combining a straw man enemy of " greedy businessmen profiting off the deaths of heroes" with a feel-good story about a " lost" item being returned to distant family members. Recently he " returned" a " Purple Heart Death Diploma" issued by the state of Vermont to a family of dustant relatives ( 3rd cousins twice removed) of a poor 18 year old guy who died of flu and never left Vermont in 1918. It made a great photo op and  he stated that  " greedy, nasty eBay gun-type collectors" who drove the price up". The 24 year old journlist did not know, nor care that dying of flu did not merit a Purple Heart. It's about selling advertising in the papers-and pathos sells. I heard that the certificate is now apparently in the back of the family garage, ready to be tossed out in the next de-cluttering. 

The free market is brutal-if you can not sell it, why would you pay to send it to the "Purple Heart Museum"? You won't -and these medals will go into the garbage. 

This guy was apparently also a trump Campaign county director and has been lobbying hard for his poposed " Purple Heart ban" . 

[Jim Baker]

I saw that one of his PH's he returned to the family (with press coverage of course) was sold on Ebay about two months later.  He just doesn't get it.