Serious Collectors Only, Old Chap

Under the watchful gaze of a captain of the Grenadier Guards and a major in the Royal Artillery, I settle against a Royal Air Force souvenir pillow and sip Tetley tea.

The solders are mannequins, but their uniforms are the real thing. This is British Collectibles (Militaria) Ltd. in Santa Monica where Ivan Hiller--formerly Royal Air Force--sells an eclectic mix of vintage military memorabilia at his toy store for grown-ups.

The life-sized figures could be straight out of Madame Tussaud’s, but this is no walk-in museum. Indeed, one buzzes to get in and a sign on the door mentions that the establishment caters to “serious collectors”.

Hiller, 68, the jovial proprietor, explains, “This isn’t a surplus store.”

Indeed, there’s not much here for the surplus gear crowd, save for some never-worn 1940s “Bombay Bloomers,” those properly baggy British Army desert shorts ($65 a pair).

Basically, Hiller says, “We finish at World War II.” Under glass are a well-worn leather helmet (Royal Flying Corps, 1915, $650) and a Scottish officer’s dirk, circa 1875, with carved ebony handle and a matching skean dubh (a smaller dagger, carried in the top of the hose when the kilt is worn). The set: $4,500.

Winston Churchill being Hiller’s hero, he couldn’t resist stocking a little cigar-smoking bulldog wearing a Union Jack blanket. Originally a patriotic souvenir, it sold during World War II for about $2. Asking price: $425.

For collectors of kitsch, there’s a commemorative Charles and Di plate (both are smiling). Hiller’s asking $45 but knows the market has “absolutely fizzled out. The next big thing will be when the kid gets crowned.” (And he isn’t talking about Prince Charles.)

With all those British expatriates in residence, Santa Monica was the obvious place for Hiller to set up shop, right? Wrong. He chose it because he lives there. Fact is, “The British are not collectors. Their attitude is ‘I’ve seen it before.’ ”

So who buys all these buttons and badges, Mae Wests and medals, parachutes and plumes? Doctors, lawyers, judges, tourists and celebs. “Michael Jackson is always in here,” Hiller says. “He has his own little museum of some of these beautiful uniforms. He wears some of the stuff.”

But Hiller’s bread-and-butter business comes from ads in upscale military publications. “Not the soldier of fortune and gung-ho magazines,” he hastens to add, but those read by collectors of “up market military antiques.”

Ninety percent are Americans. “Great Anglophiles--and they do love history,” he says. “They want to find their roots.”

A case in point: Steve Drake, an engineer, has stopped in to pick up a few kilt accessories. He’s a member of the San Gabriel Valley-based 42nd Black Watch Highland Society. “It must be in my genes,” he says. His grandmother was from Scotland.

Buyers fall into two categories: Serious collectors and people beautifying their homes with a little history. The collectors wouldn’t dream of wearing those priceless uniforms. The decorators go for regimental drums made into coffee tables.

After a few bounced checks, Hiller stopped renting to the film studios. Now movie makers buy one uniform and copy it. The store’s current check policy: “Checks cashed here if you are over 80 years of age and accompanied by your grandparents.”

Hiller’s top ticket item ($10,500) is a Bengal Horse Artillery officer’s helmet--”from the when-we-owned-India period.” Of black lacquered metal, it’s not exactly understated with its leopard-skin band, gilded ornamental comb and long, red horsehair plume.

The snappy scarlet and blue uniforms and those ornate helmets are what catch the visitor’s eye. But Hiller, who “tends to go overboard on aviation,” gets quite worked up over tattered old RAF oxygen masks, goggles and pilot’s logs.

At 17, he faked his I.D. and declared to the RAF his burning desire to be a pilot like his father before him. In truth, “My old man had never seen an airplane. He was a tailor.”

And, in truth, Hiller was both patriotic and pragmatic. World War II was about over and England needed Bevin Boys (named for Minister of Labor Ernest Bevin) to work in the mines. Hiller didn’t want to be a Bevin Boy.

He won his wings and even flew a couple of missions in a Lancaster. Later, he flew for the Israeli Air Force during the war of independence. Back in England, he opened an Army surplus store. “The surplus turned into collectibles and I stayed with it.”

In 1957, Hiller followed the sun to California and in 1964 opened a shop in the mid-Wilshire area. He’s since relocated twice, eight years ago to the present site at 18th and Wilshire in Santa Monica.

Every eight weeks, he flies to England, scouring estate sales and farmhouses for the dwindling number of British military antiques. “The stuff is drying up,” he says. “There’s very little left out there.”

One problem is that, when discharged from the military after the two world wars, the British had to turn in all their gear--jackets, boots, shaving kits--and the government destroyed it. The Yanks, on the other hand, got to keep things like those spiffy leather flight jackets that now get snapped up for $2,000.

Today, Hiller says, “You’ve got to be very, very careful” about reproductions. He is wary of anything that “looks too new and shiny and smells of paint.”

But should you find a synthetic bearskin, it might be real. Hiller explains that Prince Philip, a conservationist, was taking flak about Canadian black bears giving their skins for the hats of the Coldstream and Grenadier Guards, so faux bearskins were ordered. But they stood on end in a wind, wilted in a rain, and were quietly retired. Today, Hiller says, “They’re actually collectible.”

As for that attic treasure that Daddy brought home from the war? “Rubbish,” says Hiller, who wouldn’t give space to a bullet-riddled German helmet or a “rust bucket” sword. “I’ve never had anybody walk in with anything really valuable.”

But if you need a Zulu War medal, a Black Watch kilt, a uniform worn by a fireman during the blitz. . . .