UBB.threads Forums Uniform & Accessories Helmet Forum Let me hear some stories..

I thought it would be interesting to hear from some of you what the collectors mark was as far as prices on helemts and how easily were they to be had say 30 years ago.

Hello Mundt...here is a story one of my one and only real catch when I just started collecting..I was 15 and a freshman in high school in 1975...a kid in school found out that I collected german militeria..I'd been collecting since I was 13/14 in junior high..he said "Hey..i have a german helmet...i'll sell it to you for 20 bucks..."...he brought the helmet to our German class...my german teacher was from Berlin..prior Hitler youth..fervant anti Nazi of course..he brought it to class and pulled it out of a brown paper bag...not only was it a german helmet..but a size 71 (too big for my head) single decal SS helmet..M40 with first pattern Pocher decal...shell paint 80 percent..decal 90 percent..of course..none of that re Pocher.M40 or such meant anything to me at the time..I was just floored..was missing chinstrap but otherwise complete. The kid who sold it to me said they used to play army with it and kick it down the street..luckily..it didnt appear to have any abuse...I kept it until about 1992 when I traded it for a mint panzer wrapper..unissued..I wish I hadn't because it was really one of my first pieces (the first piece Iever had was a 10 dollar silver infantry assult badge and a 2 or 3 dollar tinnie "seefahrt ist not"...someone told me at the time I had a very very rare helmet worth at least 200! Can you imagine? I dont think anything costs 200 in helmets today..point also is that I worked at Mcdonalds a year later and even if the helmet was 300 or 400 working part time as a teenager I could still have afforded to buy something like that..however..tis not the case today..I sure wish I'd kept it..but I"ve managed to get two very nice helmet..one thing I did was study that decal up and down and became so familar with the patina and glitter of the shield in sunlight..it made quite an impression on me and I still remember it...! Those were the days..!

I've got $4.00 invested in this one:

Dave

It even came with an early version of a camo cover.

Dave

Here's the story:

Summer 1949 - Paris, France. I was 6 years old. The family had just moved to France as my Dad was the new Foreign Sales Manager of Kearney & Trecker, a now defunct milling machine manufacturer from Milwaukee. The Marshal Plan was driving sales of capital goods in Europe. We were living in the Hotel California on the Rue de Berri waiting for our goods to arrive.

Grandma gave me $5 as we were leaving. It was burning a hole in my pocket, so Dad took me to the famous French flea market where I found my helmet for $4. As an extra, the dealer gave me a WWII German helmet. He had a monster pile of them and found one in a very small size for me. I think it was a camo helmet but I do not remember. I played shoot-em-up with it for years and do not remember what happened to it.

German WWII helmets had no commercial value in France in 1949. Every flea market had them and there were still thousands of temporary graves, mostly with the guys helmet on to.

Anyway, against all odds, I still have the thing.

Dave

While my story does not date back to 1949, it still seems so long ago as to be in another life...

1969. I was 7 years old and at school we were cutting up magizines to make some kind of artwork. In the back of a hot rod magizine was the advertisement from Unique imports selling original German steel helmets for $4.95. I took the ad home and it sat around the house until I gave up trying to save that colossal sum of money.

Summer 1978. At the local Romulus flea market a fellow had an M40 single decal luft helmet in beautiful shape. The price was a whopping $30 which was full retail.

I was in high school and un-employed so it may as well have been $100 or $200.

Going back to the flea market looking for 50 cent and dollar items all summer long, I saw that helmet several times. Always in the same guys display of misc. antiques.

Eventually it must have sold. Again....I was destined to go wanting.

Maybe I am amassing all these helmets today as a sort of pay-back to the merciless gods that taunted me so as a kid.

Mundt,
Here's one ur gonna Love... LOL

I too was stationed in Baumholder (1/13th Inf) from 1983-87 (upper Bn area not lower) and would hit the Frankfurt fleamarket every Sat at 6am...
Most of the time I would take a dufflebag along and by the end of the day it would be FULL of kraut gear, boots-Y straps-badges in packets, belts,zeltbahns, all kinds of leather gear from the Turk junk piles..
The last helmet I bought was a single decal M40 in really nice shape.. It was 80 marks... At the time I believe that was about $26 !!!!!!
The used to have an on base flea market for famlies up by the Rec center (near german post off) and I bought several helmets there and don't think I paid more than $40 ever wheeeee!
Then there was the post rod and gun club... they were selling lugers and P38's for less than $200.
Lots of stuff to be found then...There was a good bit of stuff in the surrounding area in and around Baumholder too..There were WW2 vehicle wrecks in the training area as well.
When I left Germany I thought the German shippers were gonna have a stroke when they packed up all of my gear for household goods... 99% of it was WW2 German gear. What a great era
Kration

When I started collecting in 1956, the following was the guideline at the resale shops and trading posts in Chicago for helmets(excellent and complete of course).
SD Army, Kreigsmarine or Luftwaffe $5.00
DD Army, Kreigsmarine or Luftwaffe $7.50
SD SS $20.00
Fire Police w/ comb $10.00
Fire Police $5.00
Paratrooper $12.00

Unusual or rare helmets I can not speak to as many times they were unidentified and usually cheap. Camoflage helmets sold basically at the same price as decaled helmets. By the mid 60's standard helmets had gotten in the $15-$25 range.
Of course, the average guy was making $50.00 a week back in the mid fifties. The huge spike in pricing is from the Internet.
Bob

Wow! It is unbeliveable on the prices even from the 80's as much of the stuff then did not seem as popular as it is now after all of the movies like SPR, and band of brothers. much of the itmes in germany now at the flea markets are very beat up or in relic condition. I saw a M35 last week which was in relic condition, pitted so bad that it looked like the moon, spray painted and a horrible ss decal slapped on it and the guy was asking 300 euro! I asked him if he was high. Last year, just as I was about to leave a flea market here in Baumholder down by the lake here in town I glanced over a table that had a whole bunch of repo daggers on the table from HJ, Heer, when I saw a SA dagger under a pile of Czech bayo's it was a near mint KOLBER SA with with hanger buckle and d-ring strap. The old lady selling it must have thought it was a repo and I got it for 100 euros. As far as helmets I can get plenty of the civil service helmets, but it seems as though all of you in the states have all of the good stuff now or maybe I'm just looking in all the wrong places? lets here some more stories...

In the 1960's some Third Reich relic dealers ran ads in the back of mens mags like Field and Stream, Guns & Ammo etc....Nazi list 25 cents. My first list came from Ted Lenkel in Palisades NJ and my first mail order purchase was a minty, M.34 square dip Police helmet for $10. That was 1962 and I had already acquired a few WWI and II items from school mates one of which was an M.17 German helmet that I got in trade.

Robert

i traded a 1935 silver dollar coin for this one ...painted inside black,with apple green under a matt green,,,could be a tripple decal the way the decals are wrinkled,,,straight from a neibor picker,,,

left side

wrinkled decal,ss shield

party shield wrinkled...

Recent acquisition straight from a vets widow. He told her he "liberated" most of these items out of a shop in Germany: The EK1s are all LDO 100(Rudolf Wachtler & Lange) and the HJ buckles still have the RZM tags attached: There's more but I couldn't fit everything into one picture:

This is great! It bis truely amazing how far this hobby has come just in the past 20 year and even more baffeling that that people would sometimes use the steel pots for flower planters outside as I have seen this as a kid. Thinking back now as a kid i would go to all of these "Swap meets" at drive in theaters in the early 70's. I aways would see German helemts of all types some for $5 but no one would ever buy them. Now they are almost rare and bring such high prices. I think we are at a point now that most of the really good items now rest in private collections and private sales. I do frequent military shows here in Germany and the items are really not good as most of the decals are de-nazified and or in really poor condition. The SOldiers who originally brought these back were the ones who really perserved them in there true form. It is hard to believe that what we have now is all that is left from this time era. great stories though, I wish I would have gotten into this hobby when I was a kid.

I too was stationed in Germany,in Lahr, and would frequent the floh markets every Fri,Sat. and Sun depending where/when they were held.

German items were quite plentiful in the mid-late seventies and German helmets could be had for $25-$30.00 in good shape.

One of the funny things was, even then, they were importing a lot of items from other areas, and giving them "cache" by saying they were from this front or that battle....

I saw this in Greece last year, where the Greeks are importing continental German items and saying they are Med. theatre found..

Speaking German is a huge asset,and talk,talk,talking all the time and always asking paid off.There are finds to be had today, you just have to dig a little deeper.

The sellers at a lot of flohs are Turkish now..they are quite mercenary and because of Antiques Road Show, think that de-nazified HJ buckles etc. are worth hundreds of dollars.

A lot of weekend dealers bring in a ton of ground dug from eastern Europe,and seem to sell most of it..

My best buy was FJ double decal that cost me a whopping $275.00. That was a lot of money for an armoured trooper back then..! that was in '83

We used to have this army surplus store in Detroit (ironically named "Silversteins"). Back in the early 1970s he had barrels of surplus German helmets for 5 to 10 dollars each. People would pass over the SS helmets because they didn't have a swaztika on them!

Rick, your story is the best so far!....in my opinion.

Robert

When I was in high school (mid 60's) a friend of mine sold me single decal M-42 luftwaffe helmet that his father brought back from the war for 5.00. The decal and helmet were in very good condition and it was a large size. I promptly took it out and had it chrome plated for another $5.00. I still have that helmet today to remind me of the ignorance of youth.

Salvation Army in the '50 helmets of all kinds for $3-5.We played Army and who knows were they went from there.At times i wish I could dig in the dumps in The Bronx.There's a fortune in them.

In 1969 I bought a double decal Para helmet with the early spanner bolts and well marked liner and chin strap from a dealer at the Allentown, Pa. show for $375.!!! It was nicer than any ones you now see in reference books. I had it for years and then sold it thru the ShotGun News to a collector in California (approx 1981) for $750.! Alot of money for this helmet at that time. To this day, I am still kicking myself in the a** for doing something so stupid.