[Magic Jar]

Jerry and Norme, thank you both for your responses.

Norme, I had the same thought owing to the fact that I entered the U.S. Army during the transition from the "brown boot" to the "black boot" times. At Language School (late '59) we were in between and many of us pvts simply polished our brown shoes black. If we weren't diligent about the effort (and many of us were much less than diligent) we'd end up with sort of a cordovan look. At Friday inspections we always wore our geniune black shoes.

In any event I looked at this holster and had flashbacks of ALS in the '59 - '60 time. Given that I compared this holster with a brown leather holster (American) made in 1918 and saw that parts of it had turned a really dark shade.

You may be correct about the right loop being a replacement. My photos are seriously less than good, and in actuality the right loop is a bit lighter in color and also the stitching is a bit suspect.

In spite of those issues, I'm glad the holster looks to be an original. I just noticed that I didn't take a photo of the maker's stamping and an emblem that is there. I'll give it another go. Maybe you can enlarge enough to make out the items.

James

On edit: Ummmm. I'm not sure why the photo doesn' want to enlarge. I used the same procedure ("Manage Attachments", reduced size, etc.) as before.