Good Wear Leather Coat Company — Sale A. Pritzker & Sons 55J14 G-1 Flight Jacket

This item has been sold.
A. Pritzker & Sons 55J14 G-1 Flight Jacket
Price: $800.00 (lightly used condition) — note shipping costs below
Fit: this pattern is comfortable in the correct size
Leather: superb chrome tanned seal brown goatskin
Mouton: original rust colored mouton
Knits: replaced correct rib-rack wool
Zipper: original No.5 blackened brass Conmar zipper, which is excellent.
Size: 46

This Korean-War era G-1 jacket is a beautiful original 55J14 by A. Pritzker & Sons. It dates to around 1949-1950, and if you were to have the jacket in your hands, the leather would seem to have been tanned yesterday. It's still very flexible and dense, and looks as if new. We believe that Pritzker had two significant contracts, as they do come up on a somewhat regular basis, but not as large as the contracts that L.W. Foster was fulfilling.

The jacket is near new in condition, but as with many jackets that have wool parts, the knits were full of moth holes. They were carefully replaced, and the jacket is ready for the next 75 years of wear. No patches or name tags were ever applied to it. The collar and even the leather underneath the pockets appears to have a lighter brown or bleach applied to give those making the jacket in the factory a guide for where to sew or apply the pockets. We've never seen such a thing before. Has anyone else?

As with the great majority of originals, the jacket is sewn with some rather odd unevenness in the parts. That would be either poor cutting or careless sewing. Surely no original would suffer that! Note the zipper box leather shape, which is very much asymetrical. When undoing the stitching and then re-assembling areas like this, the odd nature of how it was originally assembled makes sewing parts like this back together awkward and difficult. Reproductions, on the other hand, are so much more symetrical. But that asymetry is the magic and glory of originals. They're imperfect, and proud of it. They scream "I was there.", while reproductions can look slightly soulless if they're too close to perfect.

Though not perfect in construction, the jacket is still very well made, and the nylon thread will probably last a millenium past when the leather falls apart (maybe in a few centuries). Pritzker is known for having poor quality knits, but the replacement wool knits in this jacket now are much better.

Yes, Pritzker had two parallel lines of stitching in the zipper tabs along the vertical waistband end. This must have been a reasonable solution when sewing the jacket.

The lining is wonderful. All we found were some abbrasive tiny holes by the corners of the front panels at the bottom, near the zipper, but it's not really worth noting. The lining fabric is dense and in superb condition. The mouton is almost new as well. Note that the teeth on the zipper are still black. There's a little wear to the black on the bottom stopper, but otherwise, the zipper looks and works as if it were made last week.

This jacket is large and fits like a typical vintage size 46. There's no sign that a size tag was ever applied below the label, which certainly should have been, but alas, not even a fray of thread is there. It would ideally fit someone in the range of 5'11" to 6'2", with a chest of 42-44", and weight of 190 to 210 pounds.

We also have this very interesting Cagleco Sportswear made 'Flying Equipment Co.' G-1 which will be placed on the sale page. This jacket is a new sight to us. We've only seen FEC jackets made by Star Sportswear, but this one is obviously made by Cagleco, and has all their hallmark details. We are selling it for $500.00 and it has almost the exact same measurements as this Pritzker.