This is my first time buying a Waffen SS visor and I need help identifying its authenticity

[David Wong]

I asked the seller if there were any tags or labels underneath the sweatband and he said that there were none.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Thank you for your post. You are in the right place if you seek orientation in what is a conflicted and confusing object. But let me be blunt, and please do not construe my words for anything other than constructive advice. You do not need to buy said cap, unless you wish to own a fake.

We have many images of real caps in various places, and you can invest an hour looking at these files and you will have saved yourself a reasonable sum of money.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Also, as a word to the wise, the Army officers' clothing sales outlet coop (Kleiderkasse) was a separate entity from that run by the SS Verwaltungsamt.

The marking you see of this Lubstein cap is for an army cap.

Certain army caps were indeed recycled in the SS, due to the shortage of the latter and the lack of branches at a point of the SS Kleiderkasse, a fact that was remedied, then, in early 1941, when such grey SS caps were then to be made freely by licensed hatters or more. Thereafter the SS Kleiderkasse grew across Nazi Europe in a remarkable way.

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Only in the rarest and most extreme case can you find an RZM tag beneath the sweat band of a grey SS cap.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The RZM tags tend to be in black caps.

Fake RZM tags are found often in fake caps in their variety.

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Do look at Mr. Mint's files of authentic grey SS caps, where has assembled a useful survey of the material.

I am sure he will append here the link.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I own more than one of these, ergo my bombast, for which I do apologize.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Here and constructed with no small effort by one of our stalwarts is a compendium of mostly more authentic caps.

You can orient yourself in this rich material.

A Guide to Authentic Third Reich Visor Hats at War relics forum

[Friedrich-Berthold]

....further.....


SS Gray-Top White-Piped OFFICER Visors

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi David, you have been given sound advice.

Cheers, Ade.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

And, in this case, the sound advice apparently so shocked the poster or not, and such a thread ends in the odd digital silence that is so often the norm.

I always wonder about the real motives of such a thread, in fact, whether the naive question springs from an honest motive or not.

Surely the knowledge we offer here has some value, at least I think so.

[S.Vestae]

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