Blockade Runner

[Thomas Durante]

Hi guys,

Wanted to show my latest Kriegs purchase, a nice Schwerin Blockade Runner. I have been looking for one of these for a while to fit a gap in my Kriegs collection and this one was priced right and had just enough wear to it to fit my taste. I rarely add anything to my kriegs collection as I am very picky, but this one talked to me due to the wear, which I like very much.

Its a Schwerin dishback. These are usually found in zink, and I have never seen one in tombak before, so I think this must have been one of the last ones made before the full switch to zink. The hinge is the type usually found on their zink BRs, but the catch is the type found on the tombak ones, without catchplate. It looks to have been silver plated, and then oxidized on the wreath and the eagle frosted. The base metal looks more copperish than yellow, so my thought is it has a pretty high copper content. Is this consistent with Schwerin badges?

Hope you like her as much as I do. I just love a certain amount of wear on these tombak badges and you can see that the end of the pin has also been sharped, maybe by the recipient, but who knows for sure.

Thanks guys.

Tom

[Thomas Durante]

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[Alex K.]

It´s a very nice "been there" badge. I like the Blockade Runner Badges in general but i have only a mint AGMuK Gablonz Zinc piece. But a Tombak Schwerin badge will come for sure in the future ...

[Graeme]

Hi Tom

Well my taste must be similar to yours, I always like some base metal poking through rather than "dangerously" mint...

Yours looks a beauty and nice to find one with the dish. I have quite a few Kriegs badges but have not added any BB badges yet, so can't comment too much on these.

My only observation is the small dimples along the ship side, some appear to have a double dimple effect. Don't recall seeing that before, but maybe I have not looked close enough. Wonder what caused those?

Great looking badge though

cheers
Graeme

[Mike Kenny]

Hi Tom,

A nice worn example that was certainly tempting when it was offered!

The tombak dish-backed examples are around but when they retain good finish they are commonly thought to be zinc badges because of the hinge. The only way to differentiate them in this condition is the presence/absence of the catch-plate.

Graeme, the double "dimples" (sailors would call them portholes ) look like a weak double-striking effect. It can be weakly seen in a few other areas on this example and is actually not uncommon on genuine Schwerin badges. Normally it's a decent sign of authenticity!

Regards
Mike

[Thomas Durante]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the replies.

Graeme, I noticed that too and looks to me like the badge might have been very slightly double struck somehow. You can also see this a bit on the bottom row of tiny square windows. I don't have an explanation for why these are the only 2 areas showing a double struck feature, when nowhere else it can be seen, other than the fact these would be the high points of the obverse die IMO.

Thanks

Tom

[Graeme]

Mike/Tom

Thanks for your thoughts on the double strike possibility..

awesome badge

cheers
Graeme

[John T]

Here is one that I sold a while back for comparision:

[John T]

rev

[Don D.]

Two very nice badges.

[Thomas Durante]

Hi guys,

Mike, I think you and I were typing at the same time. I agree with you on the light double strike and interesting that you say this is a good thing to look for on originals. I looking in the GCA database and I see one of the other BB badges in there also shows some signs of the double strike.

Thanks guys.

Tom

[Mike Kenny]

Hi Tom,

Acutally my "double strike" comment was aimed at most Schwerin badge types, not just the BB. Don't get me wrong, certainly not every genuine badge has indications of double striking!

Regards
Mike