The Lüdenscheid coin dealer find

[Norm F]

Certainly a great find.

Also remember that one of these GABs has already been found marked L56!

But wasn't this L56 mark considered post-war?

Best regards,
---Norm

[RKC]

Here's another one Giel ..

[Thomas Durante]

But wasn't the L56 mark considered post-war?

YES! I certainly consider it postwar, but what is significant is that this mark is typically found on badges from Ludenscheid firms. Same with the L12 marking. We find it commonly on S&L badges. So whoever was marking all these badges with L12 and L56, they were getting them from the Ludenscheid area. And that is where the connection makes sense.

Tom

[Nicola.M]

And the obvious question, can we take this one step further and also connect Unkown #7 GABs also to F&BL?

Even from the begining, with Frank's GAB book, Unknown Maker #7 and #8 GABs were connected by a very similar obverse design and reverse hardware setup. There are a few variations with #7 GABs, and these variations can also be found on F&BL IABs! So there is more evidence that these were all made by one maker, and that is F&BL.

Firstly is the oval hinge on #7 GABs. This type of hinge has also been found on F&BL IABs.

Tom

Hello Tom,
You are right, really similar obverse design and set-up, but are there other Funcke & Brüninghaus CupAl heer badges? Why F&BL did only the Gab in CupAl and not the IAB?

[Thomas Durante]

Why F&BL did only the Gab in CupAl and not the IAB?

Maybe they did

Its possible that F&BL made the one Cupal IAB we know of. It doesn't have the same obverse design as F&BL and that is why we never connected the two. However, the cupal IABs have similar reverse hardware setup, and more importantly, left-facing catches so that could be a solid connection point. Maybe F&BL made them but changed up the obverse design for some reason. We know that other makers changed up their designs from time to time, look at Assmann Paratrooper badges for instance, they have several wreath designs they used. Deumer used two different, distinct eagle designs on their LW Para badges. Same with Juncker.

Another possibility is that F&BL got into the IAB game later than GABs, so that is why we don't find cupal IABs by them. There are no hollow IABs made by F&BL, so that suggests they weren't involved in early IAB production. They may have started in 1942 or even 1943, and that was after hollow and cupal production was done in Ludenscheid in favor of solid, zinc production.

Tom

[Graeme]

Hi Giel

I agree that you have found a great hoard of badges, and look forward to checking the luft and kriegs ones out in more detail. Lucky boy

It may well turn out that the GAB is F&BL, but I do not like the way these threads start and escalate out of control and before we know it everyone is calling these F&BL.

Your initial deduction ends with the comment

"This leads us to one and only maker left for this GAB: F&BL"

that can not be verified and is very possibly not a correct statement.

The main connection you make to the L/56 marked IABs is the hardware and then you have worked back to see other connections. Tom agrees with every point you make and then makes further assumptions based on your assumptions, but you guys are only trying to fit the pieces that suit.

Tom makes the point that the pins are unmarked but this is conveniently forgotten when the comparison to the unknown #7 is displayed.

It is too easy to say we know manufacturers changed die designs and that the Cupal IAB could now be F&BL as well. The Cupal IAB has a distinct Vienna design.

I suspect Giel must have a little something he is holding back, another badge with compelling evidence maybe.?

Remember that the hinges and catches and pins to some extent that are being used to connect to L/56 are not unique, they look to be fairly common soldered on components, simiar to ones we see on GABs unmarked #6 (so called Juncker) and unmarked #9.

What we do know for sure is that we have L/56 marked badges, IABs, Wound, Coastal etc. We also see interesting featues on L/56 marked badges, such as the hexagonal raised hinge guides and on what we feel are unmarked L/56 IABs there have been a few variations of hinge and catch crimps.

If there is a GAB with similar raised guides, or a similar distinctive crimped set up, for me that would be a serious link to L/56. You might even think that an L/56 GAB would have a raised mark. Quite often manufactures marked across badge types, for example Hymmen with marked GABs, IABs and PABs.

The point to remember when trying to discover the maker of a particular badge, is that you have to have very solid evidence.

best regards
Graeme

[Graeme]

Maybe they did

Its possible that F&BL made the one Cupal IAB we know of. It doesn't have the same obverse design as F&BL and that is why we never connected the two. However, the cupal IABs have similar reverse hardware setup, and more importantly, left-facing catches so that could be a solid connection point. Maybe F&BL made them but changed up the obverse design for some reason. We know that other makers changed up their designs from time to time, look at Assmann Paratrooper badges for instance, they have several wreath designs they used. Deumer used two different, distinct eagle designs on their LW Para badges. Same with Juncker.

Another possibility is that F&BL got into the IAB game later than GABs, so that is why we don't find cupal IABs by them. There are no hollow IABs made by F&BL, so that suggests they weren't involved in early IAB production. They may have started in 1942 or even 1943, and that was after hollow and cupal production was done in Ludenscheid in favor of solid, zinc production.

Tom

Tom

Your comments here are mainly speculation. The first paragraph has lots of "possible" and "maybe".

The second paragraph on the the reason that there appear to be no F&BL hollow IABs is not accurate in my opinion. You suggest the reason no hollows is because they did not start making IABs early enough. As far as I am aware, zinc hollow IABs were produced late on in the war and in some cases after solid zinc production. That suggests to me that for whatever reason F&BL decided not to make hollow IABs at any stage.

cheers
Graeme

[Thomas Durante]

Hi Graeme,

Tom
Your comments here are mainly speculation. The first paragraph has lots of "possible" and "maybe".

I agree, it is pure speculation about the Cupal IABs being possibly linked to F&BL. It was in response to Nicola's speculation why F&BL didn't make IABs in Cupal. Its entirely possible they did and there are plenty of valid possibilities of why we haven't identified them yet. All speculation, but that is how we advance the hobby, but putting forth hypothesis' and then testing them to see if they make sense or hold water. No one here is saying F&BL made Cupal IABs. Frankly I don't think so at this point for the exact reason you mention, they have a Vienna Design obverse. But we can all agree that its not impossible. We are missing so many pieces of the puzzle, in most cases all we can do is speculate and hypothosis based on the few clues we are left with 75 years later.

As far as I am aware, zinc hollow IABs were produced late on in the war and in some cases after solid zinc production. That suggests to me that for whatever reason F&BL decided not to make hollow IABs at any stage.

Not correct in my opinion. Hollow zink production came before solid zink production. The logical progression is:

1. Hollow Brass production
2. Hollow Zink production
3. Solid Zink production

Logically, this makes sense that when badges makers first switched to zink production, they still tried to use their early, hollow dies. Eventually they would have switched to solid production.

Also, its is more complicated to produce a hollow badge. You need two matching dies that fit perfectly together. But on solid backed badges, you only need 1. So it fits logically that makers switched from hollow to zink production to speed up production and also make it more economical later in the war.

We also have period documentation to support this progression; the Wissmann letters to S&L in March 1942 state that badge production from this point forward should be "solid back". So that would suggest earlier production was hollow and then switched to solid back around March 1942.

We have several instances with IAB documents from 1943 and 1944 coming with solid-backed badges.

More evidence would be the Vienna design PABs. By all accounts these are considered mid-to-late war badges made by Souval, Orth, Hobacher, AWS, etc. These are all solid-back badges, there are no hollow versions to be found. This suggests solid production was the norm for most makers in the last years of the war.

Like everything else, there could be exceptions to the rule, and one or two makers could have still been using hollow badges late into the war. FLL would be one maker that comes to mind, but even here I think there is a logical explanation of why they used hollow badges late in the war. Like the other makers, FLL switched from hollow to solid production, probably in 1942 or so. They made solid zink badges and crimped in their reverse hardware. But it appears that late in the war the crimping tool broke down and they had to switch back to soldering on their hardware (probably 1944 or so). Since the solid-backed badge had intentral crimping areas for the hinge and catch that was no longer functional, they pulled out their old hollow die and used that with soldered-on hardware to finish out the war. Speculation on my part, but it makes sense with the timeline.

Tom

[Giel VW]

Sorry for jumping too fast too conclusions guys. This was of course just a start of the thread, I was hoping for more evidence to support the statement.

Can we agree on one thing... that this GAB is a Lüdenscheid product?

Does anyone know of any F&BL packages at all?

[Thomas Durante]

Does anyone know of any F&BL packages at all?

Hi Giel,

I was wondering the same thing myself. I don't know of any F&BL-marked packets. Some F&BL CCCs I know of came in those generic cartons that we typically associate with FLL production, but they aren't marked at all and ofcourse could have easily have been switched over the years.

Tom

[wrongplanet67]

Very interesting, Giel.

Here's my Funcke & Brünninghaus