WW2 uniforms for sale
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Guides for these pieces
- Dating a French military uniformThe cloth gives the period, the inner label gives the year, the collar tabs give the unit. The four places to look, in order.
- Identifying a German helmet from 1935 to 1945The rim, the vents and the skirt stamps separate the three models in a minute. And why the decals are the most faked element on the market.
- Spotting a reproduction or a fake: the seven-point methodAn aged reproduction fools the eye, not the method. Seven concrete checks to tell a period piece from a copy before you buy.
Collecting Second World War uniforms
A complete uniform from a single man is the exception. What changes hands are single pieces, German field tunics, British battledress, American items, more rarely French 1939 tunics, which the buyer then brings together. A group whose sizes, cut and wear match is worth much more than a sum of good pieces with no connection between them, and that is where most of the price difference lies.
Dating from the inside
Dating goes through the inside of the garment. On German items you read depot stamps, size indications and, until the early 1940s, a maker's name; from 1943, that name gives way to a firm number allocated across the Reich. The cloth says as much as the label: dense, even wool early in the war, blends increasingly loaded with artificial fibres later, a shade drifting towards a dull grey. On the British side, the 1937 pattern with concealed buttons is distinguished from the simplified 1940 version with exposed buttons. American contract labels often give the most direct reading.
Recomposed pieces
The most frequent manipulation is not making a fake garment but enhancing a real one. The tunic is period, the collar patches and badges added to it are not. Look at the thread, the stitch length, the cloth left paler under a removed insignia, old needle holes. Finally, the sizes worn at the time are small, moth holes are commonplace in wool, and reproductions made for re-enactment sometimes have forty years of ageing behind them.