Quote Originally Posted by Bill F View Post
I know nothing about canteens and this is not about canteens.To see a question asked by a novice like we all are/were get answered by a thoughtful and obviously knowledgeable collector is still nice to see.alibi ,you should have a gold star by your name here.my 2 cents.
Thank you for the kind comment. I would like to point out that I stopped collecting about 30 years ago, and my advice is to obtain reference works rather than material culture equipment, but alas the adventure of "finding" stuff on the table of a dealer still holds fascination for many. I always get a laugh when a collector states he "found" some item at a gun show or on eBay. As much gnashing of teeth that is generated over online auctions I have to say that in all the years I was collecting (before eBay) I never saw so many different examples of field mess kit equipment as I have since signing on to eBay in 1998.

This goes to the question at hand on this thread. Patience and a little knowledge about how to use eBay to best advantage would be useful to obtaining, at a reasonable price, an "Indian War" canteen and strap. It is useful to search the online auctions with the appropriate key words to obtain results. I have found that sellers do not always know what they have except that it is a canteen, and acquired a few nice examples of canteens to examine and photograph from the category "TIN WARE". Doing an item by item search of say "MILITARIA" sub-category "INDIAN WAR" is too time consuming, and you may miss a suitable example at a fair price listed elsewhere.

The problem is as I previously mentioned sellers and dealers rarely accurately identify what they have and canteens that even remotely resemble Civil War canteens will be listed in that category. This would not be so bad except the seller usually has over priced the item because they think it is in fact Civil War, or knowingly miss-list it there in the hope that some unsuspecting and unknowledgeable collector will bid.

The only way to properly assess any item that you are contemplating acquiring and getting what you want is to acquire knowledge of the equipment. For example the replica canteen offered as "Indian War" on the web site previously linked on this thread has the 1898 and later style "U.S." (number 5 in my previous post) and is misrepresented as Indian War period. I perused the website and it did not surprise me that the canteen is misidentified as most of the replica equipment offered has obvious deviations from the genuine articles. It occurred to me this may have been intentional so there is no question the equipment is replicated, but I also thought perhaps they just don't know the correct nomenclature, pattern year, and etc. For example, the web canteen strap identified as "1902" is clearly marked "1913" and the construction is incorrect from the original, which 1/4 million were manufactured in 1904-05. Where the dealer got the 1902 date from and then marked them 1913 is a mystery.

I am engaged in researching and writing a book on U.S. individual field mess equipment: the equipment issued that is used to sustain life - canteens, cups, meat cans, utensils and etc.