US Air Service, Air Corps, & Army Air Forces Wings from the Duncan Campbell Collection

I first met Duncan Campbell at the Allentown Gun Show back in the late 1980's. Our mutual interest in US Air Service / Air Corps / Army Air Forces Wings brought us together immediately. I could not believe that I was meeting and conversing with the "Father of US Wing Collecting", and Duncan was pleased to meet a young (at the time) man with a great interest in one of the areas of his passionate collecting. Duncan and I spent much time on the phone and writing letters (pre-email days!), as I was eager to learn all I could from the man, and he was eager to help me navigate through fakes and fakers, and to see what goodies I had turned up. A high point in my early career dealing in Historical Artifacts, was finding a US Air Service Pilot Wing that Duncan was unaware of, and receiving his full blessings on the wing. For a while it was the only example known, but I have personally located 4 more examples since then, and I've seen a couple more, so we can safely assume 10 or more exist. But back in those early, somewhat pre-internet days, finding that first one was quite a feather in my cap! In 2009 Duncan's collection was sold at Bonham's Auction in San Francisco, and I was there, bidding for myself, and a client. This category exists to keep the provenance of Duncan's Wings (and perhaps other artifacts in the future) alive for future collectors.