New here (hi), help ID'ng my Opas coat.

[Opas Coat]

Hey guys, I would like to say this is a heluva site!

I bought my first/ only fedora three years ago and love wearing it with my black trench coat when weather and occasion permits.

I would like to thank "MK" for accepting me to this forum, I have a hotmail account and with a quick phone call to confirm I was in fact me I was granted permission to post here.

So, About the coat at hand. This was my Opas (German "Grandpa") who is now 76. He wore this riding his Horex Regina around Germany. I don't know exactly where but he talked allot about Russians... So I'm guessing the coat is from the late 40's to 50's. It has some obvious "road ware" and definitely shows its age. The zippers are "Mann" for the small ones and "Talon" for the large front.

There are no tags, sizes or any other form of ID from what I can tell.

Here are the pictures:

Here is my current motorcycle jacket I have, the closest I could find reference the padding in the shoulders and elbows.

It looks alot like this one I had found in the Luftwaffe thread:

I would also like to know where I could find one to fit me, I'm 6'4 and 200#, my opas coat fit me when I was 12, its would come half way up my fore arm. Ocean Drive leather from Vancouver said they could make me a copy to fit for about 2K.

Thanks allot guys!

 

[FinalVestige79]

Welcome to the Lounge!!

Well...having a copy made will be very very VERY expensive. Thats custom stuff and the price is automatically doubled if its not already a ready-made item. But thats not to say dont do it, you might get lucky, try Aero and Indy Magnoli.

It looks to be an awesome jacket! It does look like a Luftwaffe Jacket, possible modification of a Luftwaffe jacket? This is very interesting. I wish I could be of more help.

Dylan

 

[feltfan]

Johnson Leathers?

You might try Johnson Leathers of San Francisco.
I know they duplicated another Lounger's grandfather's
jacket a couple of years ago. You can search here to
see the original photo and the jacket they made.

http://www.johnsonleather.com/

I have had one of their jackets for about 15 years. Excellent.

 

[cafebmw]

opa's jacke is from the 50's

your jacket is an archetypical german motorcycle jacket from the 50's.
they typically had stitched shoulder and elbow padding (actually no real padding); braided epaulettes (shoulder pieces), attached on the collar side with braided leather buttons (hard to come by as spares here in the u.s.); moleskin lining rsp. the sleeve lining often a sort of rayon; 4 zipped horizontal front pockets; zipped sleeves; the more fancy ones had also (usually) red piping made of some sort of plastic (earlier ones had red leather piping) along the pocket and sleeve zippers; . it looks like your jacket has them as well. most jackets were black and dark green. brown ones were more common in the early 50's, a carry over from the 30's (black, dark green and dark grey were absolutely dominant in the 40's, wartime!!).

unfortunately the brown leather hides had the tendency of getting these almost suede like surface, resp. the glossy top layer would sort of peel/break off, something like you have on totally dried out horsehide. i guess it's the tanning process.
here in san francisco at La Rosa on height st they have a superb jacket with all the fancy stuff. i think it's around $700.

 

[Opas Coat]

Wow, thank you. I actually have one or maybe both of the braided buttons for the shoulders somewhere.

Would mine have the "Fancy Stuff"? Does the SF store have a email or web site? I would love to see this thing. It would be nice if I could find a similar one and have it altered to match. (if it fit in the first place).

I looked for the reproduction on the listed site, no luck.

 

[Indy Magnoli]

That's a really great jacket! We could certainly reproduce this for you, no problem. Drop me a line if you're interested.

Kind regards,
Indy

 

[BigHairyFinn]

Those leather buttons you can find, but you get "fake" plastic ones as well that look the real thing... I got rid of the military buttons in my "luftwaffe" as they were the fakes that had nasty sharp edges but I had a bundle of "old buttons" so I didn't need to go shopping...

The collar and hip buttons are "fake" as they're heavier duty, the arm buttons "real" - can't really tell the difference from this distance.

 

[Opas Coat]

WOW, I just got off the phone with my Opa, He told me that some he bought it some time in the 50's. It turns out that he also has an original U Boat trench coat, an oriognal Canadian WW2 Bomber coat and a Russian officers belt which I have seen.

I almost cried when he said that years ago in Toronto he had the U Boat coat cut shorter because it was too heavy. He did tell me that when he came to Canada wearing it everyone was looking at him... He was like "Vhat are yu luuking at?" Then I made the joke "Ja, vhat? I parked mien U Boat at der dock, ist der a problem?" He laughed. He got it from his Brother who was on a Mine sweeper.

He still has it and says its still heavy. I think its ear marked to be mine in a year or so along with his bomber coat.

 

[Charlie]

Hello

It's not a Lufftwaffe stuff, and never will be !

It's just a german motorcycle jacket from the 40-50's. Not that rare in Europe. It's look in good shape, a Pecard treatment and few sticthing, and it'll be back on the road !