Sub Badge

[Eric Stahlhut]

Here is one that comes from an impeccable souce (I know, I know) but has interesting characteristics, and I'd like to have opinions. Material is fire gilt bronze and weight is very light. The pin assembly is also very fine. Detail is very fine. My assumption is that this is a parade piece from the 30's. Opinions?

[Eric Stahlhut]

pin assembly

reverse:

[Doug See]

I have one like this also, but I forget what the pin looks like and am not at home. The detail on this is exactly the same as one of the variants of the solid badges marked Schot. They appear to come from the same mold or die; they are an exact match. The solid Schot badge I refer to is the one some believe to be a repro, but I disagree. On these later Schot badges, the T is not quite as distorted (long cross to the T) and the sub is slightly more squared off than some earlier Scot badges.

There ARE repros of the Schot badges, complete with fake maker marks, but just because there are slight differences in the way the T's are struck does not indicate a repro. The fake marks are way off, with the letter spacing and T totally different, plus subtle differences in the typestyle. If you compare several original Schot marks, you will see that the W and the T all appear slightly different from one to the other. I think this is a function of the way the mark was stamped, rather than an indicator of "good stamp" versus "fake stamp". Both the W and T are at extreme ends of the die, and will be distorted diferently according to how hard the die was struck. The left half of the cross line in T will vary in length as a function of the angle and the depth of strike. Many will disagree with this, but I believe it to be a plausible explanation. Schot made u-boat badges from the 20's through the late 30's, I believe, and I doubt that all were not made from the same set of dies and/or maker stamps .

[Doug See]

P.S.

I also have in my collection a cast repro which was made using this same hollow badge as a master. Believe these to be of pewter-like metal. The detail is exactly the same as your hollow badge, but the cast repro is smaller--you can see it was cast from the interior of the hollow badge, therefore slightly smaller in all dimensions. The detail on these solid cast repros is very good.
Sorry I can't post photos of all these, since I am on the road.

[Doug See]

Here's my hollow u-boat badge. Sorry, the color is not good in the photo. It's actually a darkened brass with some a little gilt.

[Rick Research]

And mine-- obverse

[Rick Research]

Reverse:

[Rick Research]

The firegilt hollow stamped type seems to have been universal in the 1930s, which is quite odd, since no other naval badge was ever made this way.

Here's a 1937/38 photo closeup--the light weight, top of the wreath pin, and unmistakable Feuervergoldet finish are obvious