Hi juoneen,
When it comes to the Kriegsmarine badges of Souval, the maker mark alone does not differentiate between wartime and post-war production. The font used during wartime and post-war is consistent for each badge type as follows:
U-Boat - both angular and round fonts
Destroyer, Minesweeper, Auxiliary Cruiser - angular font only
Blockade Breaker, Coastal Artillery - round font only
Fleet badge - a font that's halfway between angular and round in style
S-Boat - small angular font
Souval in Vienna was neither bombed nor occupied, and manufacture just carried merrily on after May, 1945 so there's no way to distinguish wartime from early post-war production until much much later on when we see the weird hardware substitutions and unmarked versions.
Early post-war Souvals aren't "fakes" in the conventional sense since the only distinction is the arbitrary line drawn in May, 1945. Since there's no way to tell when they were made without provenance like Hubert's ground-dug S-Boat, we just call them "wartime compatible" when they look consistent with wartime methods. Like you say, this makes them less desirable to many collectors who are only interested in those worn during the war while others collect every variant because that's their interest.
Those stamped L/58 are another matter. We know for sure Souval was using the stamp on some (but not all) badges produced in the 1960s, but we still don't know 100% whether the mark was ever used in wartime on KM badges although we suspect not.
A few other threads pertaining to the L/58:
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=184708
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=576673
Best regards,
---Norm
When it comes to the Kriegsmarine badges of Souval, the maker mark alone does not differentiate between wartime and post-war production. The font used during wartime and post-war is consistent for each badge type as follows:
U-Boat - both angular and round fonts
Destroyer, Minesweeper, Auxiliary Cruiser - angular font only
Blockade Breaker, Coastal Artillery - round font only
Fleet badge - a font that's halfway between angular and round in style
S-Boat - small angular font
Souval in Vienna was neither bombed nor occupied, and manufacture just carried merrily on after May, 1945 so there's no way to distinguish wartime from early post-war production until much much later on when we see the weird hardware substitutions and unmarked versions.
Early post-war Souvals aren't "fakes" in the conventional sense since the only distinction is the arbitrary line drawn in May, 1945. Since there's no way to tell when they were made without provenance like Hubert's ground-dug S-Boat, we just call them "wartime compatible" when they look consistent with wartime methods. Like you say, this makes them less desirable to many collectors who are only interested in those worn during the war while others collect every variant because that's their interest.
Those stamped L/58 are another matter. We know for sure Souval was using the stamp on some (but not all) badges produced in the 1960s, but we still don't know 100% whether the mark was ever used in wartime on KM badges although we suspect not.
A few other threads pertaining to the L/58:
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=184708
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=576673
Best regards,
---Norm
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