Tanks for Sale

August 18, 2016 6:35 AM

The Normandy Tank Museum is selling it’s entire collection.
posted by dfm500 (32 comments total)

Yeah, but they don't tell you how much the shells cost.
posted by little onion at 6:49 AM on August 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

There is something very appealing about that Harley with the tommy gun in a scabbard.
posted by 445supermag at 6:50 AM on August 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

Link to the museum.

Link to the auction.
posted by notyou at 6:51 AM on August 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Tanks for the memories, as I always say.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:53 AM on August 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

There's plenty of free tanks in Normandy as long as you can recover them from the bottom of the channel.
posted by bondcliff at 6:56 AM on August 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Was? Normandie?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:01 AM on August 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

There is something very appealing about that Harley with the tommy gun in a scabbard.

Did someone say Streets of Fire reboot?
posted by valkane at 7:01 AM on August 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Touring the National WWII Museum "behind the scenes" in 2012, we were in their storage garages where we saw several vehicles that they had just bought from a French museum that was in trouble or closing. I wonder whether it was this place.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:04 AM on August 18, 2016

Tanks.... for the memories!
posted by wotsac at 7:11 AM on August 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

That Harley looks like it would be worth more than $17,000 to the right person. WWII Harley with leather gun holster?

Also, why was this post not labelled Tanks for the Memories?
posted by blahblahblah at 7:19 AM on August 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also, why was this post not labelled Tanks for the Memories?

Because at 6:35 this morning, I was working on the ‘stay awake’ part of the post. Wit doesn’t usually show up until about 10:00 am, if at all.
posted by dfm500 at 7:53 AM on August 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

:updates wedding gift list:
posted by Morfil Ffyrnig at 7:58 AM on August 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

There's plenty of free tanks in Normandy as long as you can recover them from the bottom of the channel.

Tanks for nothing!
posted by Daily Alice at 8:04 AM on August 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

The Normandy Tank Museum is selling its entire collection at auction next month before closing its doors because it failed to attract enough visitors.

It's always sad when attendance at a museum tanks.
posted by Dr Dracator at 8:08 AM on August 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

I wish I had more money.
posted by corb at 8:19 AM on August 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

I would love to have a tank to drive to an NRA meeting. They do have rifled barrels, after all.
posted by TedW at 8:43 AM on August 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

We're just re-treading old ground.
posted by Mogur at 9:24 AM on August 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Richard James (Aphex Twin) has a tank.

1

2
posted by oceanjesse at 9:31 AM on August 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

But can they be restored to full working order ?
With the katayusha launcher option, too ?
posted by y2karl at 9:40 AM on August 18, 2016

The real question is: Is the sidewalk outside of your house hollow?
posted by I-baLL at 9:44 AM on August 18, 2016

I too would like to say tanks for something.
posted by yhbc at 9:46 AM on August 18, 2016

There's plenty of free tanks in Normandy as long as you can recover them from the bottom of the channel.

Tanks for nothing!

What did you expect. They've been treading water for years.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:50 AM on August 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'd love one of these for parking in Boston in the winter. I'll take that parking space, thank you. What are you going to do, cut my treads, smash my turret? Dealing with alternate side parking in NYC would be a hassle though.
posted by Hactar at 11:05 AM on August 18, 2016

Back in the 1960s, a motorcycle *club* got itself a half-track and took to the streets of East Cambridge, without bothering to register the thing. Turns out that steel tracks really chew up asphalt. The vehicle was confiscated.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 11:19 AM on August 18, 2016

There is something very appealing about that Harley with the tommy gun in a scabbard.

Even more appealing with added Captain America. (It's the bike he rides going into the final big battle in 'The First Avenger'). I can see a bidding war between military buffs and Captain America fanboys/girls getting totally out of hand and that bike going for something ludicrous.
posted by Vortisaur at 1:27 PM on August 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Dibs on the Jeep.
posted by Capt. Renault at 1:46 PM on August 18, 2016

Yeah, but they don't tell you how much the shells cost.

$20 bucks for the printer and a title loan for the ink cartridges.

Tanks fur nuthin', HP.
posted by BlueHorse at 2:59 PM on August 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

> Dealing with alternate side parking in NYC would be a hassle though.

Yeah but it turns like a, erm, tank. Parallel parking would be a dream. Drive straight in then rotate in place. Or, again, it's a tank. Just drive right over then. Question is, which vehicle gets the parking ticket? The one that parked first and won't move, or the one on top of what is closer to a pancake than a car.
posted by fragmede at 5:15 PM on August 18, 2016

I would love a half-track, but W 43rd in Manhattan is probably not the best place for it. I could imagine that getting it down the ramp into the parking garage would be a pain.

There used to be WWII re-enactments near where I lived in the UK, and even though I knew they were on, it was still a surprise to turn a corner to meet an Sd.Kfz.251 full of guys in Wehrmacht uniforms.

But not as much a surprise to me as to my (retired, WWII vet) father-in-law, who had no idea what was going on, and nearly drove us into a tree...
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 6:51 PM on August 18, 2016

43rdAnd9th: There used to be WWII re-enactments near where I lived in the UK, and even though I knew they were on, it was still a surprise to turn a corner to meet an Sd.Kfz.251 full of guys in Wehrmacht uniforms.

I was participating in a multi-period re-enactment event last weekend (UK), and the repeated pained announcements over the tannoy that "A visitor has AGAIN parked their car in the middle of World War Two..." caused much amusement across the site.

(Granted, it was an area full of vehicles: however, if you're coming to a re-enactment event and blithely parking in the middle of 1940s TANKS, JEEPS and MOTORCYCLES, then you may wish to rethink your assumption that your Ford Fiesta is in the correct place [or, indeed, that it will still be in one piece by the end of the show].)

But not as much a surprise to me as to my (retired, WWII vet) father-in-law, who had no idea what was going on, and nearly drove us into a tree...

I can imagine, indeed! (All joking aside, I hope he wasn't too badly shaken by that.)
posted by Morfil Ffyrnig at 3:00 AM on August 19, 2016

I spent a good few moments before clicking through struggling to divine what "tanks for sale" was a pun on. I still half believe it somehow may be.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 8:38 PM on August 19, 2016

Tanks for sale are tanks for $omething.
posted by y2karl at 9:48 AM on August 20, 2016