Quote Originally Posted by genius View Post
Notre Dame looks kelly green to me here. What's really interesting is, the numerical identifiers on the back of those ND helmets. I've seen a handful of leather helmets with the cross on the top auctioned off as Notre Dame but none of them had the numbers on the back to my recollection.
Sorry for the late response - I REALLY appreciate your reply, but I tried to take a break from the internet...and failed.

That's a real good point regarding the numbers on the helmet. I once bought a batch of old leather helmets that contained what appeared to be a late 50's-early 60's white plastic helmet. It turned out to have two layers of paint over the original and was in fact a professional model leather helmet from the last year they made leather helmets. It was Notre Dame's color beneath the two layers of paint, but had a dark navy blue stripe. When I found that Notre Dame used that exact model in the late 1950's (they were the last college team to use leather helmets) I thought I had struck gold, but then found a documented example that in fact had a black stripe. I sent pictures to a large auction house and they told me that they planned to auction it as a Notre Dame helmet. I refused to give it to them, and sold it instead on ebay. Game-used fraud is rampant with the auction houses, which is why I have always been a fan of Ken's photo-matching his game-used items.

In any case, thanks for your reply - I just finished a different painting and will be starting on this one fairly soon.