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Its orange painted surface was taped, scratched and visibly worn - much like the Corvettes he used to restore.
Nonetheless, for 40-year-old Warsaw resident Curtis Worrell this was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Worrell and friend Jim Parker, North Carolina, are avid collectors of football helmets. After a recent purchase on eBay, an internet auction site, the duo now owns one of the most sought after pieces - Hall of Famer Jim Brown's helmet from his 1956 senior season at Syracuse University.
"There's no player greater than Jim Brown, in my opinion," Worrell said.
Having Brown's game-worn, authentic helmet is like a card collector falling into a mint condition Babe Ruth rookie. Worrell called it the "Holy Grail of helmets."
Brown, who played professionally for the Cleveland Browns, is in both the NCAA and NFL halls of fame. As a running back, he combined speed and power. He was the first Syracuse player to don jersey No. 44, and it has since become the most hallowed Orangemen number.
Worrell and Parker purchased the helmet for $5,000, though Worrell says it has been appraised between $30,000 and $80,000.
"Very few people wore that style of helmet," Worrell said. "Jim Brown wore an extra wide helmet because he had a large head. It was double-riveted, while most just have one rivet."
Brown's helmet, which was last worn in the 1957 Cotton Bowl against Texas Christian, was boxed and stored away in an attic for 45 years.
The helmet was given to a Syracuse, New York, gentleman by a friend of former Orangemen coach Ben Schwartzwalder after Brown's last game. The gentleman's idea was for it to be a gift to his son.
When his child was a daughter, the helmet remained in the attic. Last month, while cleaning her parents' home, the daughter came across the box.
The well-preserved helmet then showed up on eBay, where Parker came across the information at 4 a.m. one morning. Thankfully, Worrell says, he waited until 6 a.m. to awake Worrell and tell him of the rare find.
The Syracuse woman, who in numerous articles requested to remain anonymous, put on the helmet a $5,000 price tag and a "buy it now" advertisement, meaning the first bidder comes away with the product.
"She put a 'buy it now' tag on it," Worrell said. "Eight minutes later it was ours. We were the first ones that wrote her. She told us we left a huge wake of disappointed people. There were a lot of people ready to pay $5,000 for it. There's only one other Jim Brown helmet and it's in a private collection."
Worrell and Parker plan to loan the helmet to the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend for display.
Though he spends much of his time working with the helmets, Worrell refused to call it a business.
Along with Parker, though, he is considered by many as the expert in football helmets. He runs a website called helmethut.com with his father, Barry Woller, dedicated to the 4,500 helmets the partnership owns. On average, helmethut.com receives 6,000 to 7,000 hits a day.
"What we do is collect and trade helmets," Worrell said. "Basically we just have fun with it."
The collection, which also includes a Marcus Allen Raiders Super Bowl helmet, is spread across the country in various museums.
Along with the collecting side of it, the partnership reproduces nostalgic helmets. Just recently they built five for the Dallas Cowboys, and then got a call from the New York Giants.
A current project has them building a helmet that will be used in sculpting a 19-foot statue of NFL great Johnny Unitas for the city of Baltimore.
"Our website got a million hits last year, it's not something small anymore," Worrell said. "It's getting kind of crazy. I've always listened to sports talk radio, and then we buy this helmet and then my friends from all over the country are calling me to tell me they heard me on the radio."
