"maybe you can expand on how this cap differs this from an "authentic" Welhausen SS visor"
Why? the original poster said he wasn't buying, so why help those small cottage fakers improve their product. For those interested, study the archived threads.
I was going to comment on Mr werewolf666's comment, but I glad to see more polite members commented first and covered all my possible queries.
I will say one thing, I don't think Mr werewolf will last long around here.
Sorry your hats is fake, if your convinced it's original maybe an hand on inspection by one of our SS headgear experts would answer your question.
But you get more Flies with Honey then you do Vinegar.
I will say this, and it really gives away nothing to the fakers. Welhausen was a high-end bespoke tailoring firm that also happened to make headgear as well. Not common- only a few firms did this. Although such firms (Welhausen, Holters etc.) were not "dedicated" cap makers, they knew what they were doing, and it could be said that their products were superior to those of most factory cap producers. With this in mind, does it look like whoever secured the lining in the thread-starter had spent years as a tailoring apprentice, or repeated this activity day in and day out? The answer is a resounding "no"! It is possible that the lining had to be re-attached in later years, but this is also the hallmark of a "converted" cap, hence our well-founded suspicions...
Thank you, Arran. Ryan is a friend of mine, in fact, so I appreciate your courtesy to explain your view to him. In other cases, those who purport expertise especially in this
aspect, i.e. the cap that was or was not made once the the SSWVHA and or RZM liberalized the production of this item ca. early 1941 is slammed without surcease,
so that in many cases, even on this site, many authentic caps are put into a "questionable" category. Of course, this tendency is extracted from the wise management
of the other site, known for its gentle manners and so forth. Ryan is a serious hat collector and he would be an asset to this site, actually.
I own sixty (60) or more SS caps, and I have done my best to share my collection with you. The majority of you has never handled an authentic SS cap, let alone owned one.
Arran is the exception here, but the cohort of those who can offer an opinion based on real experience is very slight. Collecting postal caps or those of the ancillary and insignificant branches of the civil service and so forth is not the same exercise and cannot allow the same generalizations. I have also been punished here for the ownership of sixty or more SS caps, and thirty and more black SS uniforms combined with forty three years and more professional study of Germany, national socialism, and its military with more than my share
of insults, raised eyebrows, throat clucking and balderdash from persons who cannot spell in German or locate the address of their prestige cap maker on a map. Why is this so difficult? Nor do I resort to the artifice of closed threads, but I do the heavy lifting of answering questions, even when I am attacked for it or my friends, whose collections are multiples of more than mine, or also attacked and certain moderators never so much as utter a peep of solidarity. Never.
Thanks, again, Arran, for your expertise and wisdom in this and so many other issues.
- - ------- - -
I have owned Wellhausen and even now own a Holters cap and or caps.
My Holters cap.
This is ex a significant collection from a decent fellow who died too early.
My Wellhausen cap is in the Hayes or Moran book. I bought it in 1969 or '70 for the sum of USD 35 and it came into the hands of a pernicious and troublemaking "collector," who was always saying that everything in everyone else's collection was fake. I developed a particular dislike of this unwillingness to allow anyone to
own anything without his whispering that it was fake. He did this in the 1980s, of course, before the internet took hold decades later, but he embodied for me
a type of person I have come to loath. It was a very nice cap, and had a Luftschutz newspaper under the sweat band to give it the proper fit, I guess.
This "collector" did not take good care of it, either, as it had deteriorated in his care. It was virtually unused when I found it, but then so was I, of course.
The thread-starter COULD be original- I'm just pointing to an area of concern I'd want to investigate in-hand. Ultimately, only a close personal examination of a piece like this can tell us what we need to know. And I'm talking an examination with mini lights, dental mirrors etc. that would allow examination of the paste board, padding, etc.
I have an image of the cap somewhere, but you'll have to wait.
FB and Arran, what are your views on restoring these caps? Perhaps some restoration could be the reason for some of the unusual features? This is just a layman question for I don't even know if "restoration" is even possible when discussing caps of this age and style of manufacture.
The others here abhor "restoration," but I have often found SS caps stripped of insignia, or with fake insignia, and I have restored them.
The issue here is that many army caps are remade into Waffen SS caps. But that was also done at the time, so there you are.
Or Waffen SS caps were made into army caps at the time, and on and on.
There is a plethora of remade caps for Waffen SS from army caps. No doubt adheres to this fact.
However, I found a grey SS cap in otherwise sound shape that had the Muetzensteg damaged and the sweat band was lost to time.
I have a collector friend who is a self taught tailor, and he restored the cap with the straightening of the steg and the recycling of
a period sweat band identical to what would have been there. I restored also the Totenschaedel.
Of course, when I sell it, if I sell it, I would surely tell the buyer.
Others believe that large stocks of this material was put into the famous Nazi cave in May 1945, and was found like the Polish gold train last week,
and this is the only source whence persons can collect. If someone diverges from this path, then they are a reprobate.
You will recall the Bihler caps, i.e. a white and black cap of the epoch '37-'38 where the white cap was found with the peak detached. The famous Ben, who is an expert restorer in the English custom, fixed the cap and it sold for a fortune.
Seems ok to me, but I guess others are repulsed by it. As one who wears headwear, the things get damaged
when you wear them, and, in the day, you could go the hat maker and get it repaired. After all, textiles were rationed
once the war started, and you had to make your clothing last. This idea is odd to young people, habituated to throw away
clothing, but clothing used to be durable and worth repairing and so on. As I write this, and think of the hat stores
I like in Vienna, where they still have some shred of style, you can get your hat fixed there too by the nice women who work there.
We are not talking about base ball visors made in some tropical sweat shop, of course.
Fifty and more years of collecting probably mean that my standards are in the gutter, which is a fact I embrace.
I appreciate Arran offering his critique here. Others can oblige us with a like courtesy versus the curt dismissal with a snigger that is done by the players of inside baseball
and so forth. I never played baseball, nor inside baseball. I read books about German history to my detriment.
Ryan is a serious cap collector with a nice collection, and I have gotten excellent things from him, for what it is worth.
Once more, I own ten and more grey SS caps of various types and the rest are all quite black, to include those with the private maker mark as in use after February 1941. That is, the grey ones.
I wonder what Wim would say in this connection?
Last edited by Friedrich-Berthold; 02-21-2018 at 06:53 AM.
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