Seen in the Back Room in an Antique Shop

[checkit]

Officer's brass trimmed Pickelhaub - with chinstrap and cockades, and the field cover. Completely untouched, and quite restorable.

Note that it is sitting on a crate of empty beer bottles.

The antique shop owner says it is going on eBay some day.

It reminds you of the things you could stumble on to, and buy, before the age of Internet auctions.

[MauserKar98k]

I wonder if he'd part with it if you made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

[checkit]

He won't.

[ww1czechlegion]

Sounds & looks like T... Wi...... shop @ Clear Lake, with the Nazi Flag sitting there in a back room with a bunch of other stuff. So much of his stuff goes on eBay, without giving the walk-in customer a chance to buy items like this.

They all figure that they'd loose money if they sold these items to their walk-in customers. (All the stuff like this that they don't know the exact last dime and penny that their military item is worth, so they insist that they have to throw it on eBay in order to get that last dime and penny, otherwise they're going to loose out on piles of money in their estimation, even if a collector stops by and offers them a fair price on the item.)

Looks like this one might be missing the chinscale on one side. And the mercury-fire-gilding has turned dark on the spike & chinscales, and can't be brought back to it's proper glory. And who knows what shape the liner is in, if it is even still in there, let alone if the stitching is broken on the visors from sitting on them like the antique shop owner has it. Too bad the cover is so tattered on the spike, probably chewed up by mice years ago.

I got a good laugh a month ago in the Grainery Mall in Walnut, the so-called "antique capital" of Iowa. They were trying to sell a pre-war Prussian 33rd Infantry Reg't helmet with sloppily re-stitched visors, and an extra set of holes behind the frontplate, which was now bearing a guard infantry enlisted frontplate. (for those of you who don't know, the 33rd Infantry Reg't wasn't a guard reg't.) It was a sloppily put-together & repaired piece of junk. But some unknowing person will shell out the money for a "parts-helmet" and think they have a real treasure.

Thanks for sharing the picture, it's a sad shame that the modern internet age has spoiled things finds like this for some of us.

All the Best,

Alan

[Alan Smith]

I agree - these "antique shop" types are the absolute worst about trying to squeeze every last penny out of military items. I don't know what it is about military items that gets to them; if the item is a piece of antique furniture most of them will put a price on it and negotiate. For some reason, however, the military items are (most of the time) treated as a very different category of merchandise by these shops and dealers.

Maybe it is the fear of the unknown? Most of these guys are pretty savy (for example) on the prices of antique furniture, but very few of them have any expertise with military items. Thus, I guess they are just affraid of what has probably happened a lot in the past (particularly pre-Internet): antique shop buys a military item for little of nothing out of an estate, marks it up a few 100% or so, then finds out after the item is sold that it was worth several 1000% over what they paid for it.

Example: I have in my collection a WWII German FJ helmet (no decal; late-war w/ aluminum bolts) that my brother purchased c. 1995 for $35 out of an antique shop. We were both stunned at his find, and we agreed that the only reason it was cheap is that it had no "Nazi" decals on it, so the antique shop had no idea what it had and, presumably, just stuck an "army surplus" type price on the FJ helmet. My brother (a non-collector) knew what the helmet was as soon as he saw it, having watched The History Channel with me and seeing me point out the "funny" helmets being worn by the German paratroopers.

[ww1czechlegion]

Looks like the antique dealer finally "got around" to posting his precious spike helmet on eBay for the feeding frenzy. I wonder if the photo posting on this forum gave him an incentive to finally list it up for sale???

The million dollar question is: will it suprise him, or disappoint him as to where the fleaBay auction gavel price falls? Time will tell....

All the Best,

Alan

[ccj]

What was the closing price?

Looks like the antique dealer finally "got around" to posting his precious spike helmet on eBay for the feeding frenzy. I wonder if the photo posting on this forum gave him an incentive to finally list it up for sale???

The million dollar question is: will it suprise him, or disappoint him as to where the fleaBay auction gavel price falls? Time will tell....

All the Best,

Alan

[ww1czechlegion]

The eBay auction closed literally several months ago, back in October of 2011....

From what I remember, it was somewhere between $850-$950.

All the Best,

Alan