New Record Asking Price for a Contract A-SS Visor?

[stonemint]

I can remember a time not that long ago when the collecting world was aghast at an $8,000 asking price for an A-SS Officer visor. This is the first time I can recall seeing an EM/NCO A-SS break the $9,000 barrier:

HG-44 Spectacular Allgemeine-SS NCO's Visor Cap

[Little Mermaid]

I don´t think 9.000 for an SS visor is that bad, when I think about what I paid for my green KM visor. But it is not cheap, I agree. The man does have awesome items and he knows how to sell them

[Gunny Hartmann]

I'll take two!....

[Little Mermaid]

I think I recall one of his grey visors sitting with a pricetag of 17.000 or 18.000 dollars a year ago? I suppose that fine SS material does not come cheap. I can not afford it, but I do still admire it.

[BOB COLEMAN]

A wonderful cap in outstanding condition. What amazes me is that a leading reputable dealer would continue to misidentify anything black as "Allgemeine SS." It is one of my pet peeves when items are incorrectly identified.

[big ned]

What's the betting it'll be gone by the end of the month, if not well before? I've seen collectors saying prices are dropping because of the current economic climate, well yeah, for everyday stuff that's been overpriced and will sit in a dealers window until hell freezes over unless they curb their greed. But bespoke items like this cap will never lose money imo.

'Better than money in the bank' they say, and when something as desirable as this visor comes along, that's probably true. It's collectors desires to want to own these items without much care or thought to the cost that is driving things up, and that'll never change as long as that lust continues.

[Little Mermaid]

As long as there are buyers/collectors willing to pay, prices will be going up, methinks. Crisis or not.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I can remember a time not that long ago when the collecting world was aghast at an $8,000 asking price for an A-SS Officer visor. This is the first time I can recall seeing an EM/NCO A-SS break the $9,000 barrier:

HG-44* Spectacular Allgemeine-SS NCO's Visor Cap

Without putting too fine a point on it, I was the person who bought the 8500 dollar cap from Shea a decade ago that caused such kerfloffle on the website of gentle souls and kind speech.
I paid USD 125 for a SS Sonderanfertigung cap for enlisted in 1971. This price was considered astronomical and impossible by the moulders of opinion in my small circle.
I am chums with Shea, and I know what I pay him, but I do not know what others pay. He does, however, have nice SS caps, although this kind of cap (the enlisted cap with the water proof lining) is not rare, especially.
It is in very good shape, of course, and some of you make this fact into the non plus ultra, ergo no one here should be surprised that given the endless fuss in these spaces over unused items that a dealer would exact a premium, which, he is able to get.

He found me this early officer's cap ( it is not "stonemint," nor should it be, to be real....) recently, for which I am grateful and I paid his price, which I thought was actually well within the parameters. Do you have one like this for sale at 1971 prices? Or 2003 prices?

I have several late make enlisted black caps like this, and found them when the prices started to rise with the onset of the internet.


The internet as a force in Thomas Friedman and Bill Gate's globalization has made the rich richer, and the poor are in a state of greater or lesser revolt, which shows itself on these websites. I am a student of war, revolution and peace, in fact, and the forces we witness of outrage over the injustices and privations of a rapidly changing social and economic order will lead to generalized violence.

At the same time, there are new collectors with money who want these things, and my goal here is that they at least know some of the story of these items.
I travel a lot, and am more a witness to this changing world than some, especially on the good humor website, where I think ownership of a passport and foreign travel would be considered deep treason.
This wealth and prosperity elsewhere than certain parts of my native country allow people over the horizon to partake of our interest, which by no means is our sole property and reserve.

That Shea serves this globalized appetite for foetid woolens reflects these changing social realities which are cause for much wasted words and empty emotion and reflect the simple truth that life is deeply unfair.

I am no less a witness to the declasse process in my own country, and the effects of poverty and decline that are all around me and which have troubling and shocking effects. I also see the same in my adopted countries of Germany and Austria.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Attachment 461999This is the 8000 dollar cap that sits ajar in the memory of some but it receives much love and affection in its present posture.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Also, granted how common this late make enlisted cap is, a serious and patient collector is surely not damned to pay this high price for one, is he or she? I think not. Or, a serious person can buy this object as he or she wishes.