Ersatz Pickelhaubes for appraisal

[leibregiment]

Here are three for appraisal........welcome your thoughts, thanks, Paul

[leibregiment]

2

[leibregiment]

3

[leibregiment]

4

[leibregiment]

5

[leibregiment]

6

[pzrwest]

Very nice looking halben. One thing nice about the felt halbes is they don't shrink like the leather ones but can be crushed much easier than the leather ones. they sure do look to be in excellent condition

[phild]

I'm sorry to make this post and please understand that I am far from being an expert on these, but I have some real doubts that any of these three are original. I hope more than anything that maybe this post will prompt some others on this forum who do really these (and there are at least several on here that do) but based on my experience with these albeit limited, I have concerns about the character of the felt and the fittings.

[Arran]

In my opinion all three of these are carefully crafted replicas...

[MauserKar98k]

I don't like the look of them either. What's with the pearl ring on the Garde Landwehr one? The patina isn't consistent on the Baden one either.

[leibregiment]

Thanks guys,

These have been in my collection for about 15 years and were in storage (the patina on the Baden was because the spike was not covered) I have always had my doubt about the Saxon, but it came from a family not a collector and with a cover, the other two I can trace to at least 1970/75 and the feel and appearance are quality.....I like them, are they war time, were they even issued, who knows unless anyone can tell me me who made them?

[MauserKar98k]

Any way we can see better pics of the issue stamps?

[Hoss]

Leib
The Shako body and regional cockade are poor reproduction. Regarding the felt haub's I've only had two originals a Prussian and a Saxon in 45yrs. I stopped being interested because of the proliferation of European fakes. Of course its different today with on line forums and knowledgeable collectors. I hope I,am wrong on all counts it would be a wonderful find.

Eric

[leibregiment]

Eric, I agree with the Shako, the others....well I am happy with them, one because of what they cost me and two because they look and feel good.......seen and held the copys and these are light years from them........are they real.....well whats real!!!

[phild]

Like I said earlier, I am far from an expert on these. I saw my first fake of a basic Prussian Felt helm in Germany around 1981. I understood from some German Friends of mine back then that they had been being faked for some years prior to that....I've even read recently that fakes of felt helms may date to the 1960s....I can not confirm that.

At any rate it seemed like sort of a joke back in those days that most Germans that I knew blamed the fakes of everything on the British, the British blamed them on the Austrians and the Austrians blamed most fakes on the Americans...at least that is what I recall.

I know that some of these fakes are very convincing and like everything else in military collecting it is easy to spot the differences between a candidate item and a known 100% original example (in most cases) but what is much more difficult is to say that originals never varied to have the properties of the candidate item being evaluated.

In my experience the felt used in originals was pretty thin, pretty hard and pretty fine fibered. The known fakes that I have seen have had thicker felt...usually softer and not the same quality or characteristics of the fiber as seen in what I knew to be orginals......but I can not say that no orginal made was not of thicker felt...etc..