Meet: John Duncan
Location: Southern Indiana
e mail: jduncan@smithville.net
Auction Handle: jduncan@smithville.net
About me!
Hello - I am John Duncan and I live in Southern Indiana. I am 52 years old, married, one rugrat. I owned and operated a refinishing business until a stroke put a halt to it. I did everything from antiques to kitchen cabinets. Large shop with several employees. After I was able to talk again and do light things, I decided to make my hobby a career also. I began selling relics as a business in 1996. I sold over 3000 points in Nov and Dec of 98 and am growing. I am a very concerned collector when it comes to fakes. I sure have bought my share of them! Even from famous "old timers". I got involved with the AACA to hopefully help others from making the same mistakes. Believe me - lessons were expensive! I now have a site on "RelicNet.com" and do terrific. I am having him Jim set me up with a website very soon - "JDArtifacts.com". I have a lot of people wanting different things and feel a site would make it easier to "shop".
How I got started collecting!
I was hooked since I
found my first points in the garden of my parents home in the
1950's. As a kid, I didn't know much except I sure found a
lot of arrowheads
there. I put them in a couple cigar boxes and my mom and dad kept
them for me while I was in Vietnam. I got to meet Randall Jones
and Art Gerber through the shop. Randall and I soon became the
best of friends. We didn't know about the artifact thing for
several months. This was in 1989. He soon got me hooked on shows
and enlarging my collection. With his help, I accumulated a few
very nice points over a period of 5 years. Suddenly without
notice Randall went to the big arrowhead site in the sky. I was
lost. Thanks to the friends I made those 5 years and the Indiana
Archaeological Society, I kept up my hobby. Buying, trading and
some selling at the shows. I had a stroke in '94 which left me a
vegetable for 2 years. During that time a great friend of mine
kept bringing stuff over he had found. As I got better and was
able to hunt some, we started hunting together. I always admired
a particular point he had and tried to buy it for years. Finally
I got it and it's my favorite point. It's a Redstone Clovis that
he found in Greene county. (See photo)
My favorite story
My favorite story is about a point I sold. I was fortunate enough to have an article printed in the Jan of '97 Central States Journal. It's worth reading. One of the cache blades from that story wound up in the hands of a known faker. To keep it from being re-knapped into something and out of his display, I bought it back. I think I originally sold it for $35 and had to pay $100 to get it back. It's not worth that, but it's not on the table of a faker, either.