Anyone reading through my growing list of posts will note that militaria is a broad category when it comes to collecting. With my collecting, I tend to be somewhat focused with the items I seek: pieces that fit into the displays or groups that represent the service of my family members or items associated with some specific U.S. Navy ships. In the last several years, I also began to focus on baseball-related militaria and started an entirely separate blog to share my discoveries and findings. Many collectors focus on specific item categories such as medals and ribbons, uniforms, hats, bladed weapons and firearms, or even vehicles.

Some collectors arrive at militaria collecting due to category-crossover. This occurs when a category of collecting specific items includes pieces manufactured over a production run include examples that were used in active military service.

A gift from a friend, this demitasse cup and saucer set as special meaning for me. That it was used for a U.S. Navy vice admiral’s service makes it even more special.

While I have absolutely zero interest in collecting flatware, dinnerware or tea cups, my militaria collection does include a few of these items. My collection of these items consists almost entirely of World War II-era pieces, all of which were inherited or gifted to me.

One of these areas of crossover is tea and coffee cup collecting. For the most part, military pieces are easily researched to locate their date of manufacture like their commercial or civilian counterparts. One piece that I received as a gift was a demitasse cup and saucer set with the flapping flag of a vice admiral (three white stars on a blue field). The matching saucer continued the decorative theme with an encircling ring of blue stars.

Simply turning over the saucer is very revealing when trying to determine the demitasse’s manufacturer information and details.

To attempt to date the cup and saucer, I simply flipped the items over to determine if there were any makers’ marks or identifying codes. In this case, the manufacturer’s logo, wordmark and a code are all present.  A simple Internet search yielded the information that showed the piece to have been manufactured between July and December of 1950 (via RestaurantCollectors.com). These pieces can make nice additions to collections regardless of their focus and most are relatively inexpensive.

My maternal grandfather was a ship’s cook during World War II so I suppose that I could use these pieces to assemble a well-rounded display along with his uniforms, decorations, photographs and ephemera.

Since I received my last piece of Navy china in 2011-12, I haven’t added any additional items from this area. It appears that while I appreciate this area of collecting, it just doesn’t have much appeal to me.