Floch Article - Crosses of the Wehrmacht Fake Gallery

[Luca Ongaro]

Absolutely outstanding Peter, great work, thanks a lot
Luca

[Snni]

Good work, very nice to have in mind when you are buying ek's.. Thanks alot.

[Steve P]

Dear Peter, Thank you for a superb article! Great work Cheers, S

[DonC]

Peter, I just came across this - thank you for all the hard work and research!

Don

[Jorne Ubachs]

Fantastic indeed! Thank you!

Jorne

[bob01081969]

Please look

Hi Peter I am new to collecting, and the board, but just read your piece on the fake Floch and I am glad. I am being offered a 1st class cross for 350.00 and feel I would have wasted my money if I hadn't read your post.

Here is the link to the sale

http://www.ioffer.com/i/German-1st-c...-21--137976761

Thanks
Bob, Pic's of the cross for sale.

Thank you for the kind words. Reading is important. Be it articles, books or digital media. Stop reading is accepting ignorance. Knowledge makes us strong.

Peter

[Peter Wiking]

Thanks Bob
Glad to hear that my Floch article was of help.

Peter

[Bagel]

floch 'B' type

Peter, I must include myself with the other grateful collectors, although I'm still a long way off from being able to recognize all the fakes out there. I was at the Union, NJ show on March 6th, looking for a cased ICFC when I saw one at a dealer's table who I'd bought from before. It looked decent enough until I flipped it over and instantly recognized the 'B' type cut-out on the pin (along with a large mm 5) - and then started noticing the other things, the shorter, rounded pin and the crossed beading on the obverse... the dealer said he had taken it to an EK "expert" who said it was good, but of course we both agreed that I wasn't going to buy anything I wasn't comfortable with.

The dealer ended up taking the EK over to Bill Shea to get his opinion, and of course Bill instantly recognized it for the Floch piece of crap that it was, and told the dealer all the same things that I had pointed out.

The really interesting thing (to me, at least) about all this was that the dealer told me that a DIFFERENT cross had been in the case before, but he thought the Floch (not knowing what it was) looked nicer, so he switched them. I'm betting that the original cross and case are probably genuine, but by switching things around he inadvertently made a fake cross look more attractive/genuine by putting it into a genuine case.

Short story long, he pulled the cross off his table and thanked me for teaching him a little about Flochs, and I was all proud of myself for actually being able to put something I'd learned into practice.

[Waffe]

Peter:

Thanks for the informative post.

Regards,
Kent

[steiner68]

article

Good work, congratulation !!!

[dundas]

Thx.

Thank you for the extremely in-depth walk-through on the Floch-fakes. Saved me 300 Bucks..

Nice to have someone who really dig the art of collecting and rooting out the fakes for us newbies..

dundas

[Tony T-S]

I'll join the chorus of thanks for this great article.

[kronn]

Thank you sir for the amazing article....but my big big big big doubdt is...how do you identify a Folch Ek2????????

I understand about the overlapping ribs, but, are there any more signs???