Generally speaking, this covers late-18th to mid-20th century and all disciplines from parade items to combat equipment. Good reference books include: two volumes by Carman on British military headdress; Tom Stubbs's excellent book on Imperial German officers' headdress, published by Schiffer, USA.

This is perhaps one of the rarest of the French Empire bearskin plates. It was worn in the short period (1806-08) when JN was king of the two Sicilies (Naples and Sicily). After this, he became king of Spain, and Murat replaced him as king of the two Sicilies. There were probably no more than 1,000 men in the unit, so this is a very scarce plate.

This hat is in exceptionally clean condition, having seen very little service use and been preserved in its original card box, with separate card containers for the plume. The design was heavily influenced by US uniform. It would have been worn on parade occasions with the full dress uniform, which was dark blue to match.

This little device was attached at the rear of the shako in order to hook up the chin chain. On the Home Service helmet, the hook was an integral part of the cloverleaf top mount.

This is a chin strap for the Light Dragoon helmet with black bearskin crest and dark blue silk turban, worn by this celebrated unit in the Regency period. Sadly, there is only one, a rare survivor from those days. It is in old Sheffield plate, with its original velvet lining.

This white metal spike was worn in the Victorian period on exercises when the plume was not required and on foreign service. An odd little piece of headdress paraphernalia, but increasingly quite a hard one to find.

This was worn by gunner officers on the blue cloth helmet in full dress up till 1914, following the influence of the Prussian army, who, victorious in the 1870-71 war against France, set the trend in uniform for the next generation. The Prussian artillery wore a ball on their helmet from the mid-19th century through till 1918.

THIS FAKE IS ON THE WEBSITE AS A WARNING! It is not in my possession. It has a new lining and has possibly been completely resprayed with a fairly good looking facsimile of feldgrau, but the main thing is the decal is a modern one.

This is the summer issue cap of the Hitler Youth, worn on route marches and ordinary service duty. These are rarely seen today, as they are the earliest examples of the HJ, pre-dating the RZM tagged examples of 1935 and later, which had the HJ diamond (missing here) as a device as well as the Party eagle. The red piping indicates standard HJ issue.

THIS FAKE IS ON THE WEBSITE AS A WARNING! It is not in my possession as the client on whose behalf I was selling it returned it to his source. The shell and the party decal are OK, together with the bulk of the paintwork, but the SS decal has been added much later, perhaps only ten years ago, possibly to replace a damaged police decal.

The Wasserschutzpolizei (WSP) were responsible for such duties as the policing of harbours, inland river ways and canals. This slightly scruffy example (several moth holes) of a rare side cap has blue rayon lining, a dark blue cloth body gold bullion piping.