Bob Coleman's cap ca. 1967

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Here is one of Bob Coleman's caps in our salad years, ca. 1967.

It is an extra wear enlisted cap, but with the features of an officer's cap, i.e. a velvet band and a leather peak. Early SS caps had leather peaks, surely, but this is a later make of cap.

Where is it today?

[BOB COLEMAN]

I recall this cap in my mind's eye a if it was yesterday. An officer quality private purchase cap with 800 silver insignia, privately made by Pekuro with a wonderful soft leather visor. The other ranks leather chin strap was attached to the cap with RZM pebbled officer style silver buttons. This was one of the last caps I sold when my first collection was broken up in 1974. Unfortunately, the fellow I sold it to removed the leather visor for a standard visor and replaced the leather chin strap with an officer cord. Ir is still out there in a collection altered but original.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Dear Bob,

this kind of piece makes us sympathize with Charles Foster Kane and his lost bob sled. I cannot imagine the despicable mind or wretched soul that would remove a leather peak from a cap like this in favor of a vulcan fiber peak. How truly awful. Such a thing is truly akin to rape. We celebrate the memory of your cap and wonder where it is and hope that one day fate will restore it to you. I am glad you preserved the images of the thing. I suppose that one is not truly a collector until one bleeds one's heart's blood for such pieces as this and their brilliant memory.
I, myself, have gone to extraordinary lengths of foolishness to secure again pieces that I let slip away in a faraway moment.

It is a very handsome piece.

I saw a stripped of insignia grey SS peaked cap with an enlisted chin cord at a militaria meet at a US Army base in Franconia in 1982 for all of eighty dollars, which I did not buy. It had a velvet band, but no leather peak. I did not buy the piece, as I had sold my collection two years before.

Happy collecting.