Preussen Ersatz Filzhaube

Hello Lads ... I'm new to this site but a 40+ year collector of this stuff. My comment here could be copied and pasted into so many threads I have read so far, so here goes. My experience with this stuff is that the item termed "Standard" (especially of a 100 year old item!) will have variations. Pieces swapped in and out, replaced nuts, restitching, ... NOTHING surprizes me. But my point is that a variation is very often not a "fake", just an alteration performed maybe 100 years ago, maybe 25 years ago, to "help" the helmet. Sure! ... new and repro parts are detestable only to the extent they are represented as "original". I have no problems with someone putting on a replacement chinstrap or kokarden so long as they don't try to represent them as original ... but back to the crux of my point. Whether some poor grunt tried to improve the state of his gear back in WW1 or some collector wanted to fix something coming apart or missing from his item ... Let's try to take the whole story in and deal with it. It's hard to find 100+ year old items that haven't been touched somewhere, somehow, and I am as good as anyone else in finding them out. I would just like to think that we can do better to educate newer collectors, not decry honest, accidental misrepresentations as hate-able phonies, and live within the real world terms of our hobby. Old stuff gets changed. It's usually not a conspiracy theory or plot. Deal with it and (if you are a "senior" collector like myself) aim more to understand the real cowpies that naturally exist in this hobby, and educate and inform. (And for gawd's sake let's try to bring some more youth into the hobby ... a statement I would like to make my username were it not for the fact it is too long!) Fury
 
Yes, we need youth in this hobby and I have had this discussion with some major players on this forum. People with off the wall, phenomenal collections, knowledge and experience. We are mere curators of these items. Yes, they are investments but the bottom line is, we want them to survive for as long as possible. We want a younger generation to pass them on to. It would be interesting to look into the History of collecting......I know there were collectors of Napoleonic artifacts but are we the first generation of WW1 and WW2?? Are we the first generation to have the surplus time and money to be interested in this stuff? I think that the answer lies in the fact that these were world wars, total wars which involved millions of people unlike other wars. I am the son of a WW2 vet, my Grand father fought at the Dardanelles with the Highland Light Infantry. This is part of my experience. I have an interest in this hobby as a result.
 
As soon as my camera is operable, I'll post some pics of my Filzhaube ... One of the notable differences between the example so wonderfully documented here is that my front visor has brass trim (in same patina with dull brass spike setup and wappen). Liner is identical. Also different is that mine has no back spine, and absolutely no evidence that there ever was a spine. Hmmm! :?
 
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