Marine Brigade Ehrhardt Help Please

[RoyA]

Hello gents,

A friend of mine asked me for an opinion on this but it's beyond my scope of knowledge.

May I please ask for your opinions?

Thank you all for taking the time to respond!

Roy

[Brian L.]

Modern strike from a recently cut die. These started turning up about 10 or so years ago. There are a lot of them on the market. They are extremely well-made and have fooled some fairly experienced collectors who failed to look at the obvious discrepancies.

I have dubbed these the "Luffing Wilhelmshaven" because the sail is heavily creased with ripples as would appear in a sail that was luffing (flapping) as the wind died down or it was turning into the wind. Someone with no sailing knowledge got a little too creative when they designed this new die. I've said before that Ehrhardt as a navy man would have laughed his head off at these badges, as a viking ship would hardly be going full tilt cutting through the waves if its sail was luffing.
Other details are also wrong: the head of the dragon, the planks and shields on the side of the ship, the waves and the lettering style on the name 'Wilhelmshaven' among several other things.

Here is a fake (left) and a real one (right) for comparison. You can see that the sail on the real one is full of wind, as would be proper, given the wake that's coming off the bow of the ship.

[RoyA]

Thank you so much; I greatly appreciate your taking the time to post such a detailed analysis!