Collecting the Confederacy

By the time he was 12 years old Shannon Pritchard had discovered his calling in life—collecting Confederate artifacts. He started out relic hunting near battlefields, obscure campsite locations and forgotten fortifications. Today, at age 48, Pritchard is a consultant for serious collectors of the rarest and most valuable Confederate memorabilia. His Virginia-based business, Old South Military Antiques, deals in the highest-quality collectibles. Virginia Living spoke with Pritchard at his secluded country home east of Richmond.

So, when and how did you get interested in Confederate things?

I began relic hunting when I was a kid. It started as an interest, quickly became an obsession, and before I knew it, it was an addiction. I mostly found bullets at first. When I could not find enough underground...I began looking above ground. I bought a nice buckle and some buttons from a gentleman, studied them, and afterwards sold them for a profit, and bought something better. This is the way it went for a long time.

The relics you found were genuine, but how did you know the real thing when you started buying things from collectors and dealers?

I would study, study, study. And read whatever I could. There wasn’t much literature back then. They didn’t really have a lot of Civil War collectibles shows either. I searched out more experienced collectors and dealers about my finds to pick their brains.

And what was the result of that? How did that affect your collecting?

It changed my whole perspective. I began to understand what to look for in a belt buckle, for instance. What a genuine buckle looked like, felt like, and how it was made—the color, patina, texture, wear-points, etc. I’d take pictures and make measurements. I’ve always employed my instincts, but instinct without knowledge can be dangerous, especially when a piece is tantalizing.

Why is that?

There are a whole lot more Union artifacts to be had than Confederate. The Yankees just had a lot more stuff to drop, lose, discard, wear, waste and shoot. Their stuff was quite standardized—uniform, regulation, government-made in the millions. The bulk of Confederate things are individually made, even homemade, piecework, or at best manufactured by small concerns, state depots and armories. That holds true for all of [it]—swords, leather goods, uniforms, pistols, muskets, etc. A lot are just downright crude and cobbled together. To me, these rough and rugged things speak more eloquently about the Confederate soldier and the cause than the stuff the North turned out does about theirs.

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Collecting the Confederacy