2 kriegsmarine badges for review. High Seas + E-boat

[BubbaZ]

Gray badge for the moment but I would lean to what Norm has said.
Good point Norm about "Feathered eagle" Minesweeper. When I look at my "Feathered eagle" Minesweeper and S-boot that started this thread, I have a gut feeling that they came from the same maker...
Here is GCA thread on "Feathered eagle" Minesweepers worth reading:
http://www.germancombatawards.com/th...threadid=25572
I wish a good luck to this nice badge but unfortunately best majority of such cases ends up with a statement: most likely a fake.
Cheers,
Hubert

[Matthew G.]

New Photos In

After taking these pictures and reading further I am more confident in the badges’ authenticity than ever. It completely matched Martins measurements of height, width, and weight. Therefore if somehow its fake the new book “Die Kriegsabzeichen der Kriegsmarine", by Sascha is wrong. Martin is sending me pictures of the book page later so I’ll see what other information is there as well. As for being one of those “feathered eagle” I highly doubt it; the head is night and day different, look at the pictures and decide for yourself. I took a bunch so if you feel you need others let me know because I can put them up too.

[Matthew G.]

2

2.

[Matthew G.]

3

3

[Matthew G.]

4

hinge

[Matthew G.]

high seas

high Seas requested photos...

[Matthew G.]

2 high seas

2

[Matthew G.]

high seas

the one picture is dark around the hinge but you can still see it well...nice looking badge

[Matthew G.]

the book

Here it is boys, from the book...YOU BE THE JUDGE.

[Norm F]

After taking these pictures and reading further I am more confident in the badges’ authenticity than ever. It completely matched Martins measurements of height, width, and weight. Therefore if somehow its fake the new book “Die Kriegsabzeichen der Kriegsmarine", by Sascha is wrong. Martin is sending me pictures of the book page later so I’ll see what other information is there as well. As for being one of those “feathered eagle” I highly doubt it; the head is night and day different, look at the pictures and decide for yourself. I took a bunch so if you feel you need others let me know because I can put them up too.

Hi greenmike13,

I'm afraid I still don't like it. One can't compare the eagles on the S-Boat and Minesweeper -- no maker ever used the same eagle design on both their minesweeper and S-boat. So one's left with other things like basemetal, finish and thickness, etc.

The feathered eagle heavy Minesweeper maker also made a thick Auxiliary Cruiser badge and both badge lines come in a variety of "aging" from mint to convincingly aged. Here are a couple of comparisons of some feathered eagle minesweepers to the S-Boat showing noticeable similarities in finish.

And as mentioned before by both Mike Kenny and myself, no other maker has those slender talons that match the Morigi badge.

But all that aside, the weight is a complete deal breaker for me. The feathered minesweeper is heavier than any known zinc minesweeper but even there it's nothing like the huge difference in weight between this 45 gram S-boot and the average zincer. Weight like that is nothing to do with quality or "early production" (the S-boot badge wasn't introduced until half-way through 1941 and anyway all zincers are mid-war onward.)

I'm sure Sascha, just like you, saw an interesting and convincing-looking unmarked badge for inclusion as an unknown maker in the book. That's no guarantee of wartime authenticity, although it's still useful to record for reference.

Of course, I can't say all of that amounts to 100% proof of post-war manufacture, only that the balance of evidence and deductive reasoning favours that supposition. Maybe more evidence will emerge.

Best regards,
---Norm

[BubbaZ]

Hi,
Again agree with what Norm has said.

I tried to trace the Morigi fakes. The whole catalogue of Nicolas Morigi fakes can be found here:

http://www.nicholasmorigi.com/

He's been in a fakers business for a long time in the UK. He seems fairly honest with the fact that he retails reproductions, but the bad news is that some of his reproductions are being sold by third parties as original items...

There is no 1st model s-boot there tough...but it doesn't mean that these were not manufactured in the past. Interesting is that I found there few badges with almost perfect match of the reverse hardware when compared with questioned s-boot.

Cheers,
Hubert

[Matthew G.]

I hope he has the 2nd one I asked for

Well your right they didn't have the first pattern So I e-mailed them and asked if they did...We'll see. But just for the heck of it here is their second pattern wich isn't that sharp in detail. So it's hard to imagine if this is the guy you believe it's from that his quality of repros has gone down rather than up...IF it's a repro I don't think it's from him.

[Norm F]

Another good example of this reproduction was posted by Bobki52 in this thread.

Best regards,
---Norm