Ministry Of Communications Cap

[MadZombieLenin]

Hi All-

I had a question about a new Ministry of Communications cap I just bought. Attached are the seller's photos. I read on another site that the velvet band with the black crown and blue piping is exclusively a Mining cap combination, and is not right for later Comms caps (which supposedly only had bands like the rest of the cap). However, the older Comms caps had the velvet bands.

That said, I wanted to see what the experts here thought. This cap is dated 1983 and has the right cockades and Comms Ministry buttons. I acknowledge that the chin strap should possibly be the gold officers' type, but the rest of the cap looks okay to me.

There seems to be alot of variation in non-military caps given available supplies at the time and whatnot. I just have a hard time thinking that this cap wasn't always a Comms hat, especially since it has the right buttons.

So what's the verdict??

Thanks very much!
-Matt

[Lapa]

Matt,

Buttons, cockades and the like can very easily be changed, so the fact that they are mounted on this cap does not prove anything as to its destination.

Marc

[Tretov]

First, I like all these impressive caps with beautiful color combinations from more or less obscure branches like communications, customs etc. This cap did indeed catch my liking from that point of view :) I don't really have any good reference on this kind of caps either, having a quick check at the well-known headgear website give that mining caps with these colors had velvet band whereas the communications cap used felt in the same position.

As Marc say, it is easy to move buttons and insignia, and we are left with the sellers decision what gives the best profit, a mining supervisor or a communications visor cap. I also get the feeling that the upper badge is mounted a little too low, plus the fact that the chinstrap is not golden. I get a bad feeling.

Does the cap show any wear or is it unissued?

[MadZombieLenin]

Okay thanks. It's hard to say if it shows wear. I don't have it in my hands yet. Perhaps I was a little too impulsive on this one...

[Jeffrey Meffert]

Okay thanks. It's hard to say if it shows wear. I don't have it in my hands yet. Perhaps I was a little too impulsive on this one...

Nah...If you find someone "fixed it" wrong, you can always "unfix it". I love to see a bit of velvet on a uniform.

[MadZombieLenin]

Yeah, you're right. I wasn't 100% sure about this one and went and bought it anyway. I keep buying wrong hats because I want them to be correct. I really do like the color combinations for these. I suppose I could fix it back into a Mining cap and hope the holes on the crown don't show too much...

[Tretov]

I don't think it was necessary a bad purchase, it is a nice cap and if you find it has been doctored with. I think the parts needed can be found. The same black velvet is found on railway caps as well; I like them too.

[RichieC]

IMO, there is nothing wrong with this cap. I own and have owned may others like it - dating from the 1940s thru the 80s.

[MadZombieLenin]

IMO, there is nothing wrong with this cap. I own and have owned may others like it - dating from the 1940s thru the 80s.

Okay, thanks. I think at least for the time being I'll swap out the plastic strap with a gold one and decide from there if anything else needs to be done. Hopefully not much...

Thanks again for the help.

-Matt

[Will]

I'm not sure that you want to be to eager to begin switching cap components before you really have it nailed down. There still seems to be much that collectively we do not know about the uniforms of some of the Soviet ministries.

Here is an example:

Tretov referred to the very good website on Soviet visor caps, which I look at often. I think it is an excellent and very helpful site.
But the author of the site shows a visor cap of an officer of the Soviet merchant fleet that has a cap band with an embroidered design. He states that this must have been a personal modification by the owner of the cap. Yet I have an identical cap of the same period that also has the same embroidered cap band. So I think that this style of cap band was clearly worn on that type of Merchant officer hat at some point in time.

So in some areas we are still learning.