My first piece of Finnish, M91 jacket

Finally got my first item of Finish uniform, an M91 lightweight jacket. It's actually a lot darker than the pics make it out to be. No patches but I do have the correct UN patch for it.






As per usual it's a bit big for me but rarely things come up in the correct size, especially for me!

Matt.

I like that!Reminds me of the Swedish M90.

Matt, Good first find on the M91 Finnish jacket. There is a surplus shop in Hellsinki that sells many differant patterns. Their shipping should not be too much as it will be sent to Scotland. I deal with a company called varusteleka.

My friend in the Finnish military sometimes can find other items. Many of the older uniforms are for sale. I will try to see if my friend has some contact info on the surplus shop there in Hellsinki, Finland. Harder items to find are the Finnish Helleasu desert camouflage. I believe that the government is looking at a new pattern for their troops heading overseas. Sgt P.

I'd love to be able to get hold of more items, I've tried Varusteleka before but they said they don't have any Finnish items. You can easily get the M62 reversible uniform here but newer items are just impossible to find here.

I have a genuine jacket in poor condition and a brand new set which is apparently designed for reservists (M62 also had such things). The commercial version is identical to the government issue type as far as I can tell. If you care about genuine issue you should be careful to see evidence of tags.

Steve

I visited a shop in Helsinki that sold uniforms for reservists about 8 years ago (not Varusteleka) & managed to get a pair of trousers to match a UN badged lightweight M91 jacket that I'd acquired before off ebay. The guy behind the counter wouldn't sell me the trousers until I'd produced my military reservist I.D (which of course I didn't have) - after a long discussion I managed to convince him that I was a crazy English collector & that I wouldn't be telling the authorities he'd sold me them & that I would pay in cash. He sold me them eventually, but wouldn't even allow me a receipt! They were definitely mil-spec, but had a civilian style label in them, I looked at the jackets as well & they were identical to the issue one I had in cut, construction & poppers/zippers etc, except for the label. I would share photo's but I traded the set for 'Nam stuff with QCkid a couple of years back..

Fun story! I've seen some of these commercial M62 sets, used, being sold alongside genuine issue stuff. Which is a little odd because if you private purchase you get to keep it as far as I know.

When CADPAT was almost brand new (2 years out) I was in a surplus shop in Montreal. Great one too! I got talking with the owner about all kinds of militaria stuff. He said "wait here" and came back with something. After checking the shop carefully he showed me a set of genuine CADPAT trousers from behind the counter. He asked if I would be interested. Yeah, that's like asking an obese guy who hasn't eaten in a week if he wants a Pizza. No price too high

Steve

Since these so-called "commercial" samples are identical in every way to the originals as far as I can tell, wouldn't it be logical to conclude that they are just former service uniforms which have had the small adjacent "castle" cloth tags removed?

Someone produced an example a while back that showed signs of this I believe.

The 'commercial' finnish m91 trousers that I bought were brand spanking new, no sign whatsoever of any other tags being removed. I'd be interested to see the example you mentioned - can you remember if it was m91 or the older 'reversible' m62 camo? I visited Finland in 2003 & 2004, just before the digital pattern was introduced, so the m91 was the current pattern at the time, I *do* remember seeing plenty of m62 stuff available in charity/thrift shops then, although without the castle logo label, maybe it was 'de-milled' by either the previous owners or the store staff?