Home Guard Cap Badges: Up The Thames Without A Paddle & Other Obscure Insignia

[leigh kitchen]

All kinds of Brit badges are faked - nowadays it seems worth while faking even the most common, but it was hard to understand why the very common ones were being faked years ago when they were fetching pennies instead of about £6 as they would now.

It is a strange thing that Brit badges do get faked up in the wrong metals, some have been around since the 60's or so, so they've had time to distribute around the collecting fraternity. Some of the fakes are'nt going to be that common, when you consider how many genuine badges were run off for most units there must be far less run off as batches of fakes.

I found an article in an old magazine, I think a Crown Imperial, that gave some detail about the uUTP, & then prompltly mislaid it.

Home Guard badges are'nt that numerous really, a lot were just the basic regular infantry or corps badge, rather than of a design exclusive to a Home Guard unit.
Some were continuations of earlier units badges (like the WWI Huntingdonshire Cyclist's badge being adopted by the Hunts. Home Guard of WWII) & others lasted longer than the Home Guard (I think the Radnor badge lasted in wear into the 50's?)

There are Home Guard collectors out there the same way that there are Kitchener battalion collectors, you just don't hear from them often. The knowledge is out there somewhere.

[leigh kitchen]

In Britain we tend to view cast badges with suspicion, there were thousands of the things churned out in Pakistan in recent years, but of course some cast badges are genuine - produced locally for a unit either as castings from a struck badge or in rare instances produced as a casting of a design only produced that way.

It looks like we did have hobby shop type badge fakers a while back, we all tend to view the manufacturer Gaunt with horror as they have churned out inumerable restrikes from their original dies - contact them & they'll run off the ones you want at a price.

[Marc Sherriff]

Just to put your mind at rest EVERY cap badge worn by members of the British Army HAVE been remade in one way or another, even cast in cheap metals. Your UTP is one of these many fakes. Sorry.