opinion on FJ cammo

[adam]

Does anybody know if paint produced in the old eastern bloc countries still contains lead?

[Nathan Seeya]

Lenny,

I must say there is alot of hipe and emotions around para helmets, I too would like a good camo to compare with my double decal example , but this example begs a number of questions.

1) paint is in such good condition 60 years from it's supposed birth, particularly with coarse texture, I bet I could accidently scratch it within a week.

2) Spray blotches in not camo areas, did they have paint spray cans issued by the luftwaffe???

3) if color is seen is what is seen in real view, camo is too bright to be of werhmacht typical color spectrum.

[Willi Z.]

1). There are plenty of clean FJ camos out there in collections. Some are even mint in condition. The camo condition of this one matches the overall condition of the helmet....both are exceptionally clean.

2). A good 40-50% of camo helmets are sprayed. There was plenty of spray equipment available to both air and armoured units.

3). There is an endless number of colors that were available to camo helmets. Military paint, commercial paint.....many are colors that no one would think would have been used for camo on helmets. And many are very bright. But, these colors are not even that bright or odd. They are just clean. In fact, the colors are not far from the standard 3-color post 1943 armour colors.

Camo helmets are about wear patterns.

I agree with buy the item not the story.

Sure there are plenty of bad FJ camos on repro FJ helmets....and years ago you used to see bad FJ camos are very badly worn original FJ helmets. But, it has always been exceptionally rare to see a clean FJ helmet ruined by a fake camo job. FJ helmets, but especially clean ones such as this one, have always been expensive. Today it still pays to use an original no decal Heer M42 and make a camo.....or an SS...or an SS camo. These comments do not mean that one should consider a FJ camo based only on the above facts.

There is a reason that camos helmets are collected by only a few in the collecting community. Years of experience in looking at originals is required.

Here are similiar colors on this brush painted/dabbed helmet.

Willi

[Carl Ellingstad]

Observation: This board have only three maybe four members who I personal would actually lesson to about judging helmet origin. The rest is not experienced enough to judge paint or decals (IMO). Before the Internet and forums, we went to the most experienced collector we knew and asked for his opinion, back than that was enough for us. And it was based upon holding it in the hand it self. Today via this forum we get opinions from maybe 4-10 different collectors who we hardly knew, and who seems to get status out from how many posting they have done! That makes the whole judging much more difficult to trust, IMO. Why? Because you cant learn that last little touch by reading or look at photo via Internet, you simply have to get out there and handle the items personally in own hands with a experienced collector as a guide.
It should be done by several members here (no hard feelings)<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o></o>


Regards

Carl

[JohnB]

Carl, In this forum many have stated that collecting camo helmets requires experience. Perry has said it, so has Willi. I have often spoken about a 10 year rule, i.e. not until you have collected helmets 10 years do you start making fewer mistakes. Experience makes a difference, you begin to see age and hardness in original camo paint. I have been collecting well over 10 years but I still get confused. And I feel I am loosing ground to better and better fakes.

But because even experienced collectors have weaknesses, and make mistakes, maybe camo helmets are best judged by committee. A committee of experienced collectors (i.e. at least 10 years of hardcore collecting) tries to arrive at a consensus. This will work to effectively judge most camo helmets, but not all, as for example the helmet that began this thread.
John

[Willi Z.]

Carl makes an extremely valid observation. We all know that at major shows collectors of the various experience levels all tend to hang out together with their own level, in a sense..segregation, based on those levels. That is just a natural expectation. Internet forums tend to mix all those levels together, resulting in a mix of opinions, with the inherent nature of the internet making all those opinions equal.

John, I am sure you have been collecting camo helmets for much longer than 10 years...heck, I have known you for that long .

I kinda see this differently. The first ten years or so, I never voiced my opinion. I just listened, watched and learned. I attached myself to those who seemed to know what they were talking about...and I judged them by what they owned. Then for the next 10 years or so I decided to focus on my collecting area and decided to try to master a small part of the hobby..still continuing to listen, watch and learn from those I considered to be the masters. But, it has only been in the last 5 years or so that I began to offer my opinion while continuing to listen, watch and learn.

I certainly agree that photos on the internet are not the way to gain the experience to know this stuff........NOTHING replaces hands-on experience.

[Edelweiss]

What Carl maybe meant - and if it's the case I agree with him - is that more than sometimes people think "I know nothing about that, but I will give my opinion anyway". And on the contrary, I know several high-end collectors registered here that usually keep their mouth closed ; and I'm sorry for that too, but can better understand them though ; even if their opinion would be very often helpful.

So, how must be considered such a "committee" and consequently its "judgements" ? Difficult question for someone relatively recent on the forum... Number of posts do not make skills and experience, I'm a living example of this : still in the "learning" process in (too) many domains...

Interesting thread anyway, and interesting camo FJ helmet too in my humble opinion. Yes of course, for me too an item must stand on its own merits and NOT on a story ; if ever it was still useful for me, I very recently had a - free but very precious - lesson given by a friend collector about this...
So, it's not the story that makes me feel like having this FJ in hands for more investigations, but the lid itself.

PS : I wasn't aware of Willi's reply when I was writing mine : I'm also in the "learning process" in englitch, thus quite slow in writing my posts. Learning process in the "quick typing" domain too...
So, it seems that we could have a few sentiments in common.