Soviet USSR TsEPK cap labels

[Jonathan Loh]

Alrighty so I've noticed that the Moscow TsEPK label on the underside of several visor caps are missing the date.

When did the practice of adding the dates became "obsolete"? Was this already happening while the USSR was still standing, before 1991? Or only after it's fall?

I heard that if the cap is without a date, it means it's unissued. Though I've also heard that they stopped adding the dates during the late 80s. But then this...

Hmm...if it's true that they stopped adding the dates during the late 80s then I guess it wasn't something that was very consistent with each cap.

And what about the diamond TsEPK labels? I don't recall ever seeing these ones with the dates.

Anyone know anything about the datings of these? Mainly, does a missing date point out to a post-1991 produced cap? The undated TsEPK caps are really suspicious to me.

[Mathomhaus]

Whether the date appears has nothing to do with whether or not the cap was ever issued. The vast majority of the caps had the year date applied at the factory.

I have seen older general officer's caps that did not have a date, but I think going dateless was probably the exception rather than the rule. Generals were, or so I've always been told, acquiring their headgear through special military outfitters so it's always possible that the factories making their caps could have skipped year dates if they sometimes felt like it...

Frankly, were I offered a totally mint Soviet general officer's cap that was undated, I would pass on it just because it seems to me that most post-USSR caps made primarily in the Ukraine have no year date. I would particularly avoid it if also had a two part general's cockade of bright annodized aluminum with red paint rather than real enamel in the star....

If a collector is crazy (or really, really skilled) he can always remove one of the chinstrap buttons to see what date it shows. If it's a WW2/1940s visor cap, however, there's probably no point in messing with it: most year dating on buttons of any size did not start until the very early fifties.

Regards