My First One?

T

travisgreyfox

New member
Hello everyone! Today my Dad found this thing at an estate sale and wondered if I was interested, as he knows I have a few WW1/2 helmets in my collection. Since I know nothing about this thing I figured I would check here. It is in rough shape, it is falling apart and the metal parts have come loose. He is going back to the sale tomorrow. How much should would be too much to pay for this guy? Also what is it exactly? It will need to be restored, is there someone here that does this kind of work?

Thanks for the help in advance!


Travis


 
I saw the helmet photos a week ago. Sadly, the leather helmet body is in very, very poor condition, basically "relic" condition. I didn't jump on it because for me there are too many issues with it.

The helmet could be one of only 2-different things: It could be an early 1st Guard Regiment of the Foot helmet since it has a fluted spike. Or, it could have been a Prussian General a la suite helmet.

For me personally, the helmet is only worth the sum of the salvageable metal parts on it. The leather body has literally been almost destroyed, and it is probably hard as a rock from the couple photos I've seen of it.

The eagle is missing the crown from it's head, which kills the value of the eagle front plate. However, the guard star looks to be in good shape, and would be salvageable.

The leather on the back side of the chinscales looks to be in very rough condition.

Leather helmet body has a large hole in top center of the helmet. The front visor, and a large portion of the forehead area of the leather helmet body are missing. I believe the section of leather on each side where the chinscales would attach to the helmet are also missing or split out and away from the helmet body, both things that are not good.

Brian Loree who owns this website forum can do miracles with helmets. But this one would be a real challenge and also expensive to try to bring back to any presentable shape, in my humble opinion.

Hope this helps. It's sad to see a helmet like this that was entirely neglected and abused over the years. It probably had a lot of kids that played with it and broke it up over the decades.

Best Regards,

Alan
 
WOW. Thanks for all the info. I didn't know the helmet was posted for sale online, as my dad found it at an estate sale (yard sale)? I thought something was off about the eagle on the front plate. Thats very unfortunate news. I will try to get him to buy it, but for very cheap then maybe figure something out. Anyway, thanks for the info (on both forums)


Travis
 
The helmet could be one of only 2-different things: It could be an early 1st Guard Regiment of the Foot helmet since it has a fluted spike. Or, it could have been a Prussian General a la suite helmet
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Because of the Lips on the base of the fluted spike I would tend to the 2nd choice, a prussian General a la suite helmet. There was a really good post with pics which shows the difference between bavarian fluted spikes and general fluted spikes but I couldn‘t find it again and don‘t know if I am allowed to post it :?
 
Thanks everyone for all the info. Does anyone have a pic of the what eagle suppose to look like close up (on faceplate). It doesn't look to me like its broken, did all the eagles come with a crown?
 
Does anyone have a pic of the what eagle suppose to look like close up (on faceplate). It doesn't look to me like its broken, did all the eagles come with a crown?
Click to expand...

Yes, they all came with a crown on them. Sometime after the end of WW1, some of the helmets had the crowns removed on the eagle head front plates. We also see this on Bavarian helmets were the crowns were sometimes removed after WW1.

Here's a photo of 2-brass version Guard Officer front plates belonging to Brian Loree. The top one is an enlisted man's version. The bottom one is an officer's version.

Best Regards,

Alan
 
Well someone else bought the one I was eying. It looks like now I will be in the market for another one since this one peaked my interest. :D

Thanks for the pics.

BTW: Those eagles look completely awesome!
 
Sorry I am coming in on this late. A helmet with the leather in such bad shape and even missing parts of the shell only has value in its metal fittings and whoever bought it did so for those. There was no way for this helmet to be restored as is unfortunately. The Prussian Guard eagle helmets shown from my collection are totally awesome! Great to have you with us on the forum.
 
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