Hi Frederik, this is well a papakha hat, but for a colonel, with top grey cloth and golden stripes. The right to bear a papakha started at colonel level. The badge is very common, it is the common oval service badge for red army officers, or the little laurel-ornemented airforce service badge if you prefer an airforce colonel.
Your visor cap seems very correct, it is a M69 service cap, looks like for a praporchtchik service cap (warrant officer in english), between NCO and officers. The small hard paper visor indicates it could be of the first years of the model 1969. Take a look at the date of the side buttons and on the sweat band inside and say us! I've seen a piping bending to pink, check the dates.
sebastien
Sebastien
"a spectre haunts Europe, the spectre of communism"
(a well-known german bearbed)
On the sweatband there is one stamp but no date there. The buttoms is very close to the band and eaven when i removed the strap i could not see something.
But after looking on the label in good light I saw it was stamped 1973 so your date conclusion looks to be right.
Charlet is 100% correct in his descriptions but just to add to the border guard cap. The coackade is of the earlier tombac pattern which looks slightly yellower than the gilt aluminum of the later pattern. This cap actually has a dark blue cap band and not black as has been quoted in some sources which confuses people when looking at the piping. The piping should not be red but is in fact a magenta type colour.
The papakha with the grey crown was worn by Colonels only, generals had papakhas with coloured crowns. This would be in their branch of service colur. The cornflower blue so-called KGB papakhas should be viewed with suspicsion as there is no evidence to suggest that they were actually offical issue.
I have a gray-topped papakha that bears an 11 ribbon Soviet crest, as well as the crossed quill pen emblem of the Soviet Diplomatic service, which also wore papakha caps. I'll try to post a photo of it.
For one of these, I would say (in American money) about $50. You can see them on Ebay for cheaper but that is roughly the going rate. Earlier ones from the 40s and 50s go for more.
08-05-2003, 08:03 AM (This post was last modified: 08-06-2003, 06:32 AM by otlichnik.)
The piping on border guard hats was magenta colour in the OGPU, NKVD and early KGB days. Piping on M55 hats was also magenta. So I am guessing that it was officially magenta until after 1969. It may have changed to red around 1975 when the army medical colour went from magenta to red as well.
There are absolutely genuine state security general's blue top papakhas from the NKVD/NKGB and MGB eras - up till 1954. The modern ones are highly questionable. I have even seen some that are clearly grey colonel's hats deyed slightly bluish.