Attic find: A bunch of unused late war liner leather

[PotatoDigger]

Been quite a while since I last posted here but it also feels nice to be back at it ,
mainly because I kinda stopped collecting after the floods last year but I did randomly check eBay Kleinanzeigen recently (smth like craigslist but for Germany)
And found someone selling a bunch (he claims he had around 100 but he kinda exaggerated numbers a few times in my chat with him) of unused late war never finished liner leather pieces he found (probably in an attic in Thuringia, Germany.)
I guess someone took it at wars and from a factory and then they just forgot it and that's why they survived to this day in this shape.
Or maybe some time later someone found this lot and put it in the plastic crate they were found in, who knows.
I personally bought 32 pieces from him but I know of one other German collector who also got around 30, as for the rest (if there is any) I don't know who got them.
So this also is a word of caution for mint liners with the markings you can see in my photos.
I doubt if there's fakers out there putting them in late war liner bands they won't add ink stamps, though.
Nevertheless I am pretty happy I managed to get a hold of them as they are very interesting to study.
Some also have stamps from a tannery in Worms-Liebenau on them, this tannery was in business until the 1970s.

I even have one which is marked 1945, but as for markings, I will refer to them here:


The markings they have are
56cm made of one piece of goat leather E56N44
59cm made of one piece of goat leather Bo.59 Dez. 1944
61cm made of one piece of pig leather G61N45
61cm made of one piece of pig leather E61N44
61cm made of up to 4 pieces of pig leather Bo.61 Juli 1944

I hope you find them as interesting as I do

Luis

[Schwerpunkt]

quite a special find.

[barrow1901]

Excellent find

[Willmore]

It is good to see you back and I hope all is going well after the awful events of last year.

It just shows you what is still out there to be found.

Kind regards,

Will.

[PotatoDigger]

It is good to see you back and I hope all is going well after the awful events of last year.

It just shows you what is still out there to be found.

Kind regards,

Will.

Thank you!
Well, we are managing, our shop reopened about a month ago now, after being closed for over a year.
And yeah, when I saw it I couldn't believe it.
Just a bit sad I didn't get to buy the whole lot, but I just didn't want to spend that much on it, because I don't have that much money at the moment, so I only got a part of it.
Would've been interesting to see it as a whole.
I know the other collector has 3 of the 1945 marked ones, so even in this lot they appear to be pretty rare.
Not sure what I'll end up doing with all of them, I'll definitely keep at least one of each type as an example.

Luis

[TWS]

Very interesting find. Congratulations Luis.

It just goes to show how some very improbable tales of survival in our hobby are still out there.

[AndyM35]

Nice to see you back and glad to hear things are slowly getting better. An amazing find and as Willmore said, shows you what still be lurking. Is the leather still soft?

[MAP]

Yes, glad to have you back.

Great find. Uber cool. Interesting all the writing stamped on the back sides of these. I do expecially like the spliced example (4th photo)

Something great to study as most of use only see the inside a shell and don't get a chance to look at them up close like this.

[PotatoDigger]

Nice to see you back and glad to hear things are slowly getting better. An amazing find and as Willmore said, shows you what still be lurking. Is the leather still soft?

Thanks, Andy
Yes, the leather is still nice and supple and has the "old leather" smell we are all accustomed to.
I measured it and it only shrunk at most 1cm from the original markings.
Luis

[PotatoDigger]

Yes, glad to have you back.

Great find. Uber cool. Interesting all the writing stamped on the back sides of these. I do expecially like the spliced example (4th photo)

Something great to study as most of use only see the inside a shell and don't get a chance to look at them up close like this.

Thanks MAP,
yeah since I have all these around I'll conclude that the pencil writing is for the size of the overall leather piece which would also explain why some pieces have it and some don't.
I especially like the ones with the ink stamp from the tannery as it's as far as I know the only time we got to actually find out the maker of the leather without a RBNr.
I wonder if there's also some helmets out there that have stamps like that on the leather.. should be.
Personally, I like the spliced ones a lot as well, all the Juli 1944 marked ones are made up of at least 3 different pieces of pig skin leather.
I might take some more photos of how they were stamped out etc the next time I'm back home in the Eifel.

Luis