Vintage Sporting Goods Expert Discusses the Market

Paul Steinbach Headshot

Ooc 408 Ab The leather that you'll see strapped to George Clooney's head in "Leatherheads," the Clooney-directed football movie that opens in theaters this month, can be traced not to the mid-1920s, but to modern-day manufacturer of vintage sporting goods Marv Lubinsky. Founded in 1996, Lubinsky's Past Time Sports specializes in recreating leather football helmets, but also fills orders for throwback baseball gloves, hockey headgear, and basketballs and soccer balls complete with proprietarily "aged" laces. The company, which has appeared at coaches' association trade shows and provided props to several film and stage productions, supplied the "Leatherheads" set with 30 helmets and 60 watermelon-shaped footballs. Paul Steinbach asked the 59-year-old Lubinsky, a longtime dealer of actual antiques, about his busting-at-the-seams business.

Q: What led to your transition from collector to manufacturer? A: One of my interests has always been sports. I would travel around the country to the big outdoor antique markets, and after buying some helmets for the first time, I was excited to see that they sold quickly and for really good prices. People began to realize that I was the guy who could find leather football helmets, so I had more demand from athletic directors and other sports enthusiasts than I could supply. That's how we got the idea to do a really nice replication job. It took us about two years to research and develop, because we wanted the leather and the padding to look authentic.

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