One i'd given up on!!!!

[Nigel N]

Heres another reason i believe these are Souval pins.... remember the blank core Souval i got a few weeks ago....medals%20449.jpg
Same pin, same tooling marks IMO

[LuckyLuudje]

I think that George and David make a few very good points!!
I also tend to believe that they are most likely made by S&L.

Maybe a good comparisson of the frames and core to see if anything can be tracked to a certain period would be interesting.

But is there a reason to believe that Souval made 57's?
Does anyone have anything else than an EK1 from Souval in new form?

Just as a side not, IMO Souval did use other frames postwar than their standard frames

[LuckyLuudje]

The late RK that finally arrived after 3 months! I was in the process of filing a claim with painpal when it finally arrived...

Very nice George, Luckily this ended with a happy end, like Nigels cross!

[George L]

I don't know if we'll find out one way or the other for sure, but something else I just thought about is there's no straight needle S&L EK's out there, right? That's the pin setup they used on their earliest assault badges like the IAB, PAB, GAB, etc. We know they made early pieces so perhaps it was only the with the wide pins? Another point is many of the post-war Souval repops used that cheapy sheet metal hinge, but there are none on 57 EK's, right? Seems like they'd use the same catch for both, if they were cranking them out at the same time, right? Could be the repops came later, but if we could date the sheet metal catch repops to late 50's and into the 60's, then maybe we could eliminate Souval, too.

One other note of interest in 57 makes, is there's no ad in the back of my '58 dated reference for Souval. Perhaps they signed on later, but all other companies are listed: Deumer, Assmann, S&L, etc.

Heres another reason i believe these are Souval pins.... remember the blank core Souval i got a few weeks ago....[ATTACH]1330854[/ATTACH]
Same pin, same tooling marks IMO

[streptile]

I don't know if we'll find out one way or the other for sure, but something else I just thought about is there's no straight needle S&L EK's out there, right? That's the pin setup they used on their earliest assault badges like the IAB, PAB, GAB, etc. We know they made early pieces so perhaps it was only the with the wide pins?

I've thought the same basic thing, but from a different angle: at some point in mid production the combat badges all got the same pin. We also know this pin from EK1s. But the very first combat badges had a pin we don't see on EK1s. So probably (possibly) the EK1s with the "Souval" pins were first, alongside badges with the straight needle pin. Then they normalized parts and production, and all awards got the "standard S&L pin," or a slight variant thereof:

[George L]

Trevor, yep, totally in agreement on this point -

So probably (possibly) the EK1s with the "Souval" pins were first, alongside badges with the straight needle pin. Then they normalized parts and production, and all awards got the "standard S&L pin," or a slight variant thereof: