Mohawk Arms Inc has spent more than 45 years building a reputation as one of the oldest established militaria dealer and auction houses in the United States, run out of Bouckville, a small Madison County hamlet already well known to antiques hunters for the twice-yearly Madison-Bouckville antique shows that draw dealers from across the country. Under the banner Authentic Military Relics, the business deals in sixteen distinct categories of collectible military history, spanning firearms, edged weapons, headgear, medals, uniforms, combat gear, documents, photographs, art, books, and other ephemera, with inventory ranging from the American Revolutionary War and Civil War through the Indian Wars, World War I, and World War II, with particular depth in German Imperial and Third Reich period material.
Rather than running as a fixed retail storefront, Mohawk Arms operates primarily as an auction house, holding two major live, mail, telephone, and internet auctions each year, with each sale offering roughly 1,000 to 1,200 individually catalogued lots illustrated with online photographs in place of the printed catalogs the business relied on for decades. Bidders can participate on the floor, by phone, by absentee mail bid with a set maximum, or online, and mail bids that win are calculated at five percent above the second highest bid received. A tiered buyers premium applies depending on the hammer price, running from 22 percent on lots under 2,000 dollars down to 16 percent on lots over 10,000 dollars, and winning bidders are given three weeks from the invoice date to complete payment. Every item sold carries the business’s guarantee that it is original and authentic, a standard the company backs with decades of hands-on handling and international research into military history.
What sets Mohawk Arms apart within the militaria field is the reach of its own scholarship. Since the 1960s, the auction house’s printed catalogs have circulated as reference material among collector clubs as far afield as East Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, and copies remain in reference libraries across multiple continents today, a level of recognition that few American militaria dealers can claim. That reputation has carried Mohawk Arms beyond simple buying and selling into consulting work, with museums, private collectors, and insurance companies calling on the business for authentication and historical research when a piece’s identification or value needs an expert opinion behind it. The clientele reflects that range, from museums building permanent collections to professional investors, serious lifelong collectors, historians researching specific conflicts, and casual collectors picking up their first piece of military history.
Consignors looking to sell through Mohawk Arms benefit from that same network, since a piece entering one of the twice yearly sales reaches an established international base of militaria collectors rather than a purely local audience. For anyone researching, buying, or selling authentic military artifacts from the Revolutionary War through World War II, Mohawk Arms Inc is a 45-plus-year-old Bouckville, New York auction house whose twice-yearly militaria sales and internationally referenced catalogs have made it a trusted name among collectors, museums, and historians alike.
