Originally posted by Frozzer
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if this cap was mine then I would not worry about restoring the pink soutache. This is probably exactly the way that the member of the Panzerwaffe wore it, sometime after the 1942 order to remove the soutache. I would leave that part exactly as it is with just the traces of removed period soutache showing.
My reason for saying this, they are harder to find today without the soutache. These are the original types that I am after. When you look at the photos of the Tigers & Panthers. Most images of crew members with sidecaps serving in those tanks have no soutache or soutache removed on their sidecaps.
Today when one sees black panzer sidecaps for sale, they nearly always have a soutache. I will not speculate here as to why, except to say that it has become very hard to find a black panzer sidecap without a soutache. A post-war reapplied soutache adds no value to a black panzer sidecap. In fact it may devalue it, depending on how the soutache is reapplied or the existing traces of the original soutache removed/ altered.
These are the ones I am now after, the ones with soutache removed or manufactured without one. Of course, any original Pz. cap with a factory applied machine stitched soutache is also very hard to resist.
Your cap can never again be an original factory applied soutache. Why bother. IMO, better to leave that one as a soutache removed example and buy a factory applied example to go with it,
Chris
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