I understand completely and am also a believer that I am simply a custodian of the historical pieces I "own" and am always trying to learn better how to preserve. Personally, I have most of my luck finding military and police weapons and am always sad when a light coat of oil was not applied in time ending up with scrap metal when it was a very nice piece of history at one time (I should post pictures of my 1911 Erfurt, unit marked P08 Luger. I sand blasted the gun and actually increase it's value significantly!).
Folks should not read any further, I cannot help myself.
The gentleman who actually owns many of the helmets I post, and work to preserve, is the best person I know (next to my mother, wife and boys). If the world had more people like him militaries would not need to exist. He would literally trade in everything he has to help a friend and is generous with strangers as well. He does enjoy his stuff and is troubled by the deterioration but doesn't know what to do better, other than sell. He did install large fans to try to push out humidity etc.
My second son was born with genetic heart defects (he is also XYY syndrome) and required his open heart surgery at 10 days old. Yeah he had prior surgeries and many surgeries after, well due to insurance company changes(work switched insurance companies part way through the treatment), pre-existing conditions etc we were initially charged $225,000.00 as our portion. Our son is well worth the money but we only had around $5K available. When this guy found out he said not to worry he would get the money to pay, he was going to all his stuff and mortage his house to help. Well this was almost 9 years ago and it is all in the past. We fought the insurance companies and got the figure down to a cost which we were able to handle over time. BUT his offer was sincere, I hope one day to be 1/2 the man he already is.
Jim
Ron