Honor Clasps of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS

[Honor]

Honor you have done a very nice work here regarding Honor clasps of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS


Andy

Thank you Andy though we are not even half way through yet :]


Interesting but at the time when I first compared these two clasps (Klein and mine) and figured out that my clasp is not Klein, I did not have any theory to support it yet I was still sure it is original. I know it can often be very subjective in our hobby but this clasp is so nice in appearance, with a natural wear and age in hands it looks very authentic and feels just right and period, also it has came from a good source that I trust - all this really suggested me that this clasp is just another original variant of this scarce award. Plus the quality of this clasp is nothing like any fake clasp that I've ever seen. Finally, I thought that it would be very strange for any faker to put so much efforts in producing such a high-quality copy with nice sharp details and the correct die-strike two-piece construction and not to bother at all with copying the original design of the Klein clasp. Why would they need to create their own design, such blatantly wrong and absolutely different than Klein? After all even low-quality fakes mimic Klein design. Anyway, this all puzzled me and "energized" me for this research.

Below are the "best" fakes that I could find.

[Honor]

As I already said earlier in the beginning of this thread, with a search engine of this forum I have found and perused absolutely all discussions that ever mentioned the "Honor Roll" or "Honor Clasp" in anyway : be it Heer, LW, or KM clasp, just a box or document, receptionist, or period photo, if it had anything about "Honor Roll" - I read it. I really tried to find any other variant of the Honor Roll clasp (including the one-piece-construction type) or just a reference to it.

Interesting that some collectors did mentioned a few times in discussions that there were more than just one type of the Army Honor clasp, yet no one ever posted a picture of it or said where (webpage, document or reference book) it can be seen.

Luckily I have finally found an old thread (from 2008) where Bob Hritz showed two Honor clasps from his collection, which he believes are "the only two types are original" (see screenshot below). One of his clasps is a standard Klein clasp (two-piece construction with the separately applied, solid back swastika). The other clasp is the one-piece CupAl with hollow back swastika. Bob Hritz did not say why he believes it is original, but Mr. Hritz is a highly experienced and trustworthy collector with a trully world-class collection, so I had no doubts that Mr. Hritz had very good reasons to believe it is original. I am jumping ahead of myself a bit here but I can tell this for sure now both clasps that Bob Hritz showed are original.
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=296601

[Honor]

Unfortunately, Mr.Hritz did not post any other and more-detailed pictures of his CupAl one-piece construction clasp, but I have found one more example like Bob's clasp on this forum. In 2009 another forum member "Stepdale" posted many pictures of his CupAl one-piece construction clasp for a discussion (see the link to it and screenshot below). Although Stepdale's clasp is identical to Bob Hritz clasp, it was deemed fake by collectors who were obviously not familiar yet with this more scarce variant of this award.
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=353038

[Honor]

Below are Bob Hritz' CupAl clasp (at right hand) and Stepdale's CupAl clasp (at left hand) side-by-side. At first glance they look quite different but in fact they are identical (to make sure about it, we will compare them in details in the following posts).

[Honor]

Below is Stepdale's clasp. First of all, as you can see it is made of CupAl - just like Bob Hritz said about his clasp. Also just like Bob's clasp, Stepdale's clasp is the single-strike/one-piece construction.

[Honor]

Bob's clasp and Stepdale's Clasp both have the same die-flaws and pretty distinctive hand-detailing marks ( in green circles).

[beufighter]

fantastic thread brilliant work

[Honor]

If you compare the tiniest (truly microscopic) details - the veins on oak leafs of these two clasps (Bob's clasp and Stepdale's clasp) they would match you can see they are identical so are the clasps.

[Leroy]

This is great work and I hope you do the same for the Navy and Luftwaffe as well.

[Honor]

So since Stepdale's pictures of this type of Honor clasp are better in quality (and more detailed) than Bob's picture of his clasp, I am using Stepdale's clasp for comparisons later in this thread and as an example of the one-piece construction variant in the beginning of this thread (as shown again below).

[Honor]

One can reasonably say that this clasp (one-piece construction) is of a lower quality and that would be true as you can see even an excessive metal on sides and missing fragments here and there but this is what it is. Far away from perfect but still original. The quality is still comparable to other clasps, for example KM Honor clasps (see below) you can see same excessive metal and missing fragments there too (especially swastika looks very similar).

[Stepdale]

Nice to see that mine could be a good one. Luckily I didn't sell it off as a repro!

[andrewb]

Extremely interesting and very well presented. I bet you have written a book or two in the past.

I do hope you continue on with the KM and LW clasps as well and bring out a much needed book on the HRC.


Regards,
AB.

[greg1878]

Great stuff, keep going
Best - Greg

[Eddie]

Amazing presentation,indeed this should be in the book,best presentation i have ever seen on WAF yet