Stuttgart, the show, the friends and the badges

[Philippe DB]

Hi Guys,

Thought I start this thread to give you some impressions about Stuttgart and our finds. Maybe everybody who has pics of the show and the badges they found could post them in here. That would give us a good overview of quality and quantity arround.

I didn't take any pics of dealer tables (to busy looking at items) so I'll start with the 16.00 meeting on the first floor

View on what was going on downstairs

[Philippe DB]

The friends, about 25 of the Forum members met for a first beer

[Philippe DB]

From left to right, Marcus, J******246;rn, Skip, Yours trully, Greg

[Philippe DB]

Later that evening about 20 of us made it to the restaurant (thanks for organizing this Walle )

Here we had some strange kind of erzats Pizza called "Wichtel Kuchen"

[Philippe DB]

the home made beer was serves in 1,5 liter vessels like shown by Frank and we had quite of few of these

[Philippe DB]

While Frank was signing some GAB books

[Philippe DB]

others were bussy sharing ice cream

[Philippe DB]

And lifelong friendships were in the making (this was taken long after midnight and I'm not sure the parties involved remember) At least we know that they went home seperatly

[Philippe DB]

As to the serious stuff, the badges.

Much like I expected the only stuff available in abundance were the new fakes we recently discussed. Finding original badges in halfway decent condition for acceptable prices wasn't easy. Compared to last year, prices for combat badges were up with at least 20% and you didn't need all your fingers to keep count of good early hollow buntmetal badges.

here are some of the badges I brought back for my own collection

First an upgrade for my bronze RK PAB (Txs Frank )

[Philippe DB]

RK reverse

[Philippe DB]

Finally a bronze brother for my silver GWL.

Not mint but still a lovely badge that developed a bit of a strange patina

[Philippe DB]

GWL reverse.

Notice the catch. Picked it up thinking it had a replacement catch

[Philippe DB]

But upon closer examination this catch has been sitting on this badge since it left the factory, finish and patina on the catch match the rest of the badge.

[Philippe DB]

catch detail

[Philippe DB]

next a lovely type 9 mini to match its silver brother