Mint Infantry Erel schirmmütze

[GIZMO8Z]

You sure you don't have a time machine and you're grabbing them straight off of Erel's production line?

Very nice!

[spandau]

What a nice quality item, and thanks for the additional and informative text.

Cheers

tony

[heyst56]

whooooooooo nice cap
Hans

[don_kihotis7]

Mintiest of the mints

[Koguryo9]

Chris,

Your ability to find nice gems like this is unrivaled. Again I am drooling in envy. What is the size of this?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Very handsome piece.

[stonemint]

Thanks all--these early Erels are really the only ones I like, and as best as I can tell, were made for about 2.5 years.

Kogy--hat is a 56 (and uses an Arabic numeral, not Roman).

[KSH]

Thanks all--these early Erels are really the only ones I like, and as best as I can tell, were made for about 2.5 years.

I second that Chris - and it is indeed a fine example you have gotten yourself there! Most collectors probably will equate what I am about to say here with blasphemy: Overall I personally think that Erel/Lubstein is today the most over-rated cap maker of the Third Reich.


Regards,

Kenneth

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I second that Chris - and it is indeed a fine example you have gotten yourself there! Most collectors probably will equate what I am about to say here with blasphemy: Overall I personally think that Erel/Lubstein is today the most over-rated cap maker of the Third Reich.


Regards,

Kenneth S-H.

I appended an article from the UM to the effect that the cap makers had a bespoke section, in which the best craftsmen and women made caps to order in the cottage industry format. How one can recognize such a cap is elusive, and I should think that such caps deserve more acclaim than they get. I have never understood why any cap maker versus another would attract interest, save Holters, or some others that served the Wilhlemstrasse clientele. But Mr. Mint's cap is a an attractive piece, all the same. People are obsessed with high tech in North America, and the forehead free pressure cushion has its art deco kind of appeal, I guess. It is a 1930s kind of thing, or merely the expression of cunning advertising in an era of primitive advertising.
Further, most collectors have no idea that the Kleiderkasse des Heeres was a bargain coop, and hardly a thing of luxury. This cap here was sold by other means of whatever. You have only to look for ten minutes in the Handbuch d RZM to know that the names of these firms in their number remain unknown in the collector cosmos. Wilkins proffered the lunatic notion that these caps were expensive for the buyer, when in fact, they cost no more than a shirt.
The Wellhausen catalog in the property of Mr. Mint indicates the more expensive and more interesting variants, one could purchase. For people who buy clothing made by quasi slave labor in big box retail in a society utterly devoid of style and elegance....I underscore the latter.....these items appear impossibly refined and elite, which they were really not, especially at a time when the officer corps of the German army was revolutionized in its social composition in a way that had been impossible in the decades earlier, which I think Kenneth will understand. Others will not.

[KSH]

I appended an article from the UM to the effect that the cap makers had a bespoke section, in which the best craftsmen and women made caps to order in the cottage industry format. How one can recognize such a cap is elusive, and I should think that such caps deserve more acclaim than they get. I have never understood why any cap maker versus another would attract interest, save Holters, or some others that serve the Wilhlemstrasse clientele. But Mr. Mint's cap is a an attractive piece, all the same. People are obsessed with high tech in North America, and the forehead free pressure cushion has its art deco kind of appeal, I guess.
Further, most collectors have no idea that the Kleiderkasse des Heeres was a bargain coop, and hardly a thing of luxury. This cap here was sold by other means. Wilkins proffered the lunatic notion that these caps were expensive for the buyer, when in fact, they cost no more than a shirt.
The Wellhausen catalog in the property of Mr. Mint indicates the more expensive and more interesting variants, one could purchase. For people who buy clothing made by quasi slave labor in big box retail in a society utterly devoid of style and elegance....I underscore the latter.....these items appear impossibly refined and elite, which they were really not, especially at a time when the officer corps of the German army was revolutionized in its social composition in a way that had been impossible in the decades earlier, which I think Kenneth will understand. Others will not.

Thank you for your reflected intervention, F-B. This reminds me of my private purchase Luftwaffe 'Hermann Göring' cap which is among the most finely constructed caps I have ever come across, and yet the inferior contract caps of the same Luftwaffe unit made by Lubstein with "typical interior" (as if there was such a thing for private purchase caps - my cap has been referred to as having an "atypical interior" you see - it has black ribbed rayon (Kunstseide) which was used in many a private purchase cap - so how can it possibly be "atypical"?) is preferred to the work of art that I possess.


Regards,

Kenneth