The textbook black SS officer's cap for sale

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 12-13-2011, 02:22 AM

Your cap is a 1960s fake commissioned by an ex US Army Major who was the king of put together daggers. Originally the cap had the phrase "Berlin's Oldest Cap Factory," with a location on the Wilhelmstrasse that was a ministry of government and originally the palace of a Prussian nobleman....no cap works.
Sorry.

PS my attachment is an authentic and highly rare cap in perfect preservation.
It is also not mine.

**Espenlaub Militaria** · 12-13-2011 02:22 AM

We also buy and trade your items and full collections!

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 12-13-2011, 02:25 AM

Authentic caps generally have one of either of these types of linings.

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 12-13-2011, 02:28 AM

This site has more images of authentic black SS caps than anywhere in the whole wide world.

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 12-13-2011, 02:32 AM

Also, your cap is an Atwood cap in a more or less original state of repair, and it is collectable as it is. It is not worth what an original black SS general's cap would fetch, of course, but it does have value to many collectors.
Others will cite you a price, since that is not my thing, but for many this is also a very historical object. They were extremely common and worth about 25 bucks or so when I began collecting in the mid 1960s.

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 12-13-2011, 04:22 AM

I am sure others will offer their opinions here and no one is enjoined to take my statement as the last word.
There are hundreds of images of the Atwood Berlins aelteste Muetzenfabrik caps in this and other fora in their endless number....endless and the same.

**BOB COLEMAN** · 12-13-2011, 05:58 AM

I must concur with our esteemed authority FB. He is correct in all of his points. I have no idea how to evaluate a 45+ year old fake. Sorry but you can not retire on the proceeds of the sale of this piece.

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 12-13-2011, 06:04 AM

by BOB COLEMAN

I must concur with our esteemed authority FB. He is correct in all of his points. I have no idea how to evaluate a 45+ year old fake. Sorry but you can not retire on the proceeds of the sale of this piece.

Thanks. Bob has much more experience than I do, but this is surely one of the Atwood fakes of the golden past. They were not as well made as others, i.e. Erich Beinhorn or even Kupper, which I enclose here, but fake they are all the same and noteworthy for their badges. The fantasy Berlin Address is ripped from this piece. Atwood reputedly served also in Berlin and was an intel officer. I have his dagger book from the 1960s, which apparently was the first of its kind platform to sell extravagant fakes to a willing market.

I knew people in the late 1960s who had been a witness to all of this in West Germany some years earlier, in the circle around Dr. Breuer in Munich, which must have been colorful.
I also experienced the first remade caps in which this kind of Atwood fake had the interior of an enlisted Luftwaffe cap crammed into it as if done by a chimpanzee or the mentally handicapped.
It was sort of a stupid piece, really.

Happy hats and I am sorry to pour rain on this parade, but an authentic black senior leaders' cap is nowadays a pretty costly thing.

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 12-13-2011, 06:08 AM

This is a fake of similar era from another maker, which was of much higher quality.

lostandfound · 12-13-2011, 01:09 PM

Thank you for the help. Would rather know then not and have some one pissed off at me. It is still a very nice ss cap . All the best.

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 12-13-2011, 08:59 PM

Authentic examples of this kind of thing are concentrated in a few places, and since the internet is so pervasive, the chance for a killing is rather more problematic than in the golden day of swap meets, hock shops, and the Mottenkiste of magical memory.
I hate to impart bad news, but such is a realistic assessment of things as they operate in our confusing world.