ERIC: Hey, how's it going? RICK: Good.
How are you doing?
ERIC: All right.
I have some battle plans and after action reports
from the Normandy invasion.
I'm coming down to the pawn shop to try
and sell my collection of battle plans
from the invasion of Normandy.
They are reports that were gathered
through each of the divisions and put into one document.
I'm hoping to get $5,000 to $6,000 for this,
but about the minimum I would take would be $2,500.
RICK: So where did you get these?
I got these from my grandfather.
He was in World War II with the 82nd Airborne.
He worked in the plans office and has had these ever since.
It contains maps with drop zones and defensive positions.
OLD MAN: D-day was the biggest invasion
in the history of mankind.
It was just huge to the point of no return.
RICK: Yeah, the thing was it was a battle that had to be fought.
D-day.
Is one of the most historic days in our nation's
military history.
Nazi Germany had a good hold over almost all of Europe.
And the Allies needed a way in.
And France was it.
160,000 men stormed the beach of Normandy,
but man, was it costly.
Thousands died.
Operation Neptune, summary of enemy situation.
I mean, it's really, really unique.
I mean, it really tells a story about what
went on that day, which a lot of people
would really be interested in.
I'm just trying to figure out when these were printed.
It's going to be much cooler if we have
actual pre-battle plans as opposed
to a synopsis of what happened afterwards.
OK.
All right?
The invasion was June 6.
This is 28 May.
This is things they want the troops to do when they land.
So this would actually be part of the plans to attack.
These plans are amazing.
Just think about it.
If they got into the wrong hands,
it could have changed the course of history.
But before I can make an offer, I
need to know exactly what they are and when they were made.
Before or after the battle makes a huge difference
to collectors.
So what did you want to do with it?
ERIC: I'd like to think about selling it.
It's been really hard for me to find any comparable material
to this to really value it.
OLD MAN: Rick, I want somebody to look at this.
RICK: OK, yeah, thing is, we have two different things here.
We have this bound folder right here, which
is after the battle took place.
This right here appears to be pre-battle.
And I would like to know exactly what these maps are.
OK.
RICK: So let me get a buddy of mine down here
and find out exactly everything we got here.
OK
RICK: And then we'll go from there.
All right? - All right.
A while back.
I bought battle plans and maps from Iwo
Jima, another incredibly famous World War II battle.
If I can get this set from Normandy,
the thought of those two hand next to each other
just blows me away.
Hey, Mark. MARK: Hey.
So what do you have today?
I got something really cool.
I have a post-battle synopsis of Operation Neptune.
And this right here is actual battle plans before the battle.
Really?
Yeah.
MARK: Rick and the guys normally call me down when they have
something military or historic.
I don't speak to the value of it but I
can give them some understanding of what
its value is historically.
So Rick, what are your concerns on these?
RICK: This has a lot of maps and things like that in it.
And I'm wondering if that is pre-battle or post-battle.
MARK: Operation Neptune was the Allied air drop
into France as part of Operation Overlord, which
was the invasion of Normandy.
This was the battle that changed World War II
and led to the ultimate destruction of Germany.
All of World War II, we started using airborne troops.
This was something new.
We hadn't done that before.
Taking guys, dropping them behind the enemy lines,
being able to disrupt what was going on
rather than just going in through the front door.
And the idea was we were going to concentrate all these people
in a couple of specific areas.
They would all go in together.
In fact, what happened is people dropped all over the place.
Wasn't the plan, but what ended up happening
was the Germans didn't know where the heck we were.
And all of a sudden, they were fighting
people all over the place.
So they thought there was a lot more men behind the lines.
So they kept more of their troops
away from Normandy, which helped the invasion on the coast.
So it actually worked out.
Just glancing at this, I can tell you this is post-battle.
You can tell that just from the cover.
You're not going to know at the beginning of the battle what
the end date is.
These maps would take you all the way
through the battle, where people landed, what they did,
where they went.
Find out what went right, what went wrong.
You want to know exactly what happened at the time,
this would be the primary historical document
to start from.
During the war, a lot of documents are produced.
Top secret documents, restricted documents.
For somebody to have been in the position to get these and bring
them home and survive all this time,
it was wonderful to see these.
These were amazing documents.
But you said, you also have pre-battle?
I'm assuming they are.
This is nice.
This is where they were supposed to be,
where they were supposed to come together.
And what do we have here?
Top secret.
This is great.
This is really spectacular.
April of '44.
These are pre-battle.
This is where you're going to be landing,
who is going to be where, which division is going to be where.
These are all the places that they are supposed to land.
This is how it was supposed to work.
You will take Sainte-Mere-Eglise.
You will seize and destroy crossings on the Douve River.
This is amazing.
The documents from before the battle
are much scarcer because these were the documents that if they
got into German hands before the battle actually happened,
they would know exactly what we were planning on doing.
All of this related as it is to Operation Neptune,
to one of the largest airborne operations in the history
of warfare, this is really quite an impressive little group
of material.
So they're pretty damn rare.
MARK: Yes.
These kinds of documents are going
to be in places like the National Archives
because it's top secret.
You weren't supposed to bring this stuff home.
Unfortunately, they're archival pieces
rather than display pieces.
These are quick production pieces from World War II.
This just doesn't hold up.
It is not color fasted.
You get any light on it, these are the sorts
of things-- you put this in a frame
and put it up on the wall, it's gone.
These, you'd need to just put away.
They need to be in a dark, acid-free container
and kept in a stable environment.
All right. You're the best.
I got all the info, man.
Thank you.
RICK: All right, when I first saw these things,
I was thinking big dollars because we
have top secret battle plans for the invasion of Normandy.
Now that I find out that I can't frame
them and hang them on a wall, that's
going to be a major problem.
Collectors of military stuff, they
want to hang them on the wall.
They want to talk about them.
They want to show their friends.
RICK: I mean, they're important pieces of history
and they should be treated as such.
Unfortunately for me, I can't take them if I can't sell them.
I mean, I'm a business here.
I'm not a museum.
OK, absolutely.
RICK: Thanks for bringing them in.
Hey, thank you very much, sir.
RICK: There's no question these are great pieces of history,
but I kind of dodged a bullet.
In half a year, I would have had really expensive blank pieces
of paper hanging on my wall.