Just when we thought that us airsoft players have some of the coolest toys for the big boys, there are others who can be considered "bigger" boys who will make our collection of airsoft guns and gear pale in comparison to what they collect: military vehicles, especially those big bad tanks. If only I won the lottery, I've been eyeing to buy an M1A1 Abrams here, an Apache Longbow there… I can only just daydream.

But for the late Jacques Littlefield, collecting these vehicles was a lifetime passion. A multimillionaire who was an engineer at Hewlett Packard before focusing on his passion and housing these vehicles at the  Military Vehicle Technology Foundation (MVTF) where it had a collection of over 150 vehicles.

Since his death in 2009 after battling colon cancer, his collection was transferred to the Collings Foundation, a military historical foundation. The foundation held an auction via Auctions America last weekend, auctioning off around a hundred vehicles with the proceeds to be used in building a new museum to house the best in the collection in Stow, Massachusetts. A lot of moneyed collectors collectively plunked down US$10.24 million for the vehicles, with a Half-Track Personnel Carrier fetching the biggest winning bid of US$1.2 million from an anonymous bidder.

Apart from the Half-Track, other significant vehicles in the collection were the various  Sherman Tanks, and a SCUD-A Missile Launcher which came with a missile which of course cannot be launched in case the buyer has some sinister plans to rule the world.

Not all of the vehicles were sold as their reserve were not met. I don't know if there would be another bidding for the unsold batch as it would be interesting to watch all these rich collectors bid over each other a vehicle that was part of history. But rest assured that these vehicles would be lovingly cared for, just like their late collector who was determined to preserve parts of military history using his own money.