Fj officer quality cloth badge

[M. Downey]

Two weeks ago I was at a show and ran into an older gentleman who was a 101st vet. He had a small box with him of items he acquired in Germany while stationed there in late 1945. Among them were these two cloth Fallschirmjager badges. I would like to find out their approximate value.
Thanks, B.

Picture1
Picture2
Picture3
Picture4

[M. Downey]

as you can see the two are quite different... The 'common' style that I have seen before is in quite nice shape, it is very slightly soiled, but that is perhaps to be expected. the back has a white "mesh" material.
The interesting badge is the one I referred to as 'Officer quality' as it is made with fine silver and gold buillion. It was hard to get a good picture with my limited camera. It is on a heavy blue/grey cloth with some sort of backing material that looks like thin felt/paper over top of the similar "mesh" material on the other badge. There is one small partial mothing as you can see at the 4 o'clock on the obverse, and on the back a couple tiny spots of mothing through the paper/felt material only.
Is this badge very rare?

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi B, welcome to the forum!


Have you bought these badges? I don't know if the gentleman who offered you these was truthful about when and where he picked these up or if he had acquired them long after WW2 and had forgotten. Personally I think both are fakes. I have never seen any originals which match these two in design detail.

Cheers, Ade.

[Gene]

I agree with Ade, both are reproductions.

[Eric Queen]

The bullion example looks Pakistani made to me.

[John Hodgin]

The bullion example looks Pakistani made to me.

Agree Eric! We have discussed this before, isn't it odd that so many bullion jump badges appear hideous (i.e. repro.) while authentic bullion pilot, observer, and gunner badges are exquisitely hand sewn.

A story, is just a story.

[luftwaffe303]

They are repros ...

Again , agree with all. Both repros. The one on the left is very common these days and I have one myslef. Paid $10 5 months ago. The one on the right - I have seen few available on Polish website selling repros from $5 to $10.

Regards
TD