Getting my feet wet

[Stephane]

I'm a Third Reich edge weapon collector who's developing an interest for Imperial Militaria. I find the Imperial U-Boat badge and the Prussian and Bavarian Pilot badges very appealing. But it looks like a difficult field, with lots of reproductions and not too many reference work available. How can a newbie approach this field? What are the great books and who are good dealers?

Thanks to all for your input

[Daniel Krause]

Hi,


welcome in the world of Quality and Enamel!
Give up the zinc and convert!

About pilots badges were actually some niiiice threads here. Try the search function and lots of things will turn up.

Best regards

Daniel

[PaulChep]

books and dealers

You are correct, there is a large amount of reference material in Imperial medals. My suggestion would be to try to decide what you want to collect first and then purchase the reference material. You may want to start with the Imperial Iron Cross second class and collect by maker mark. Cross are still rather inexpensive at about $45-55. Steve Previteria's books "The Iron Times" is a great reference for the Iron Cross. You can get it through Winidor Press. They are a sponsor of the forum. Go to the bottom of the main page and you will see a link. Also go through the Imperial Forums and look for medals that you may like to collect. As far as dealers the only one I feel confortable recommending is Detlev Niemann, honest, good updates and great to work with. Good Luck.

[Gerd Becker]

Hello Stephane and welcome to the forum

Like from Daniel and Paul suggested, make a search in Imperial, there are a lot of good threads about badges. Imperial is an interesting field and you will see, its at least as appealing as collecting Third Reich awards, if not, more

For a start take a look in this thread about imperial aviation bades:

http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...prussian+pilot


best,
Gerd

[Gary B]

Dear Stephane,

Welcome to the forum. You picked some nice badges to be interested in. As you will see on the forum pages that have been recommended to you there are few badges more controversial than the Imperial Aviation badges, with schools of thoughts/opinions varying widely as to if/when the crown mark was used on badges. A minefield to say the least with neither side giving way. Some heated discussions have occured on this subject. So despite reading all of the threards and forum postings you wil be left to what YOU are comfortable with in terms of wartime, post war or repro badge.

Don Chalifs book is another fine reference on Imperial aviation badges from many countries.

Gary B

[Stephane]

Thanks to all for the great replies. Yes, a search reveals quite a wealth of information. I will also check out the books that have been recommended.

I have another question. Did anyone ever dealt with emedals.ca ? They seem to have an interesting imperial section.