As if spotting replicas was not hard enough already...

[Von Hoth]

I'm a newbie who wants to start collecting party badges. I was collecting firearms but they're prices are too high for me. Anyways, from reading posts on here and looking at ebay, the amount of fakes is unbelievable for something that not many people would ever decide to collect.

what books do you recommend for me to get?

and do you ever come across these museum replicas on this website, does this add alot of pain to the mix because they're so well made?

http://www.thirdreich.ca/heagles.php

[Scott C.]

Unfortunately, fakes and reproductions plague every facet of Third Reich collecting, from the most common to the most rare. It used to really get under my skin (I bought many a fake in my early collecting days), but now I look at it as part of the challenge of collecting. Without the fakes, websites like this wouldn't be needed . Not sure if there is a recommended party pin reference book out there, but chances are it's not perfect - few (if any) references are without errors. I recommend you spend lots of time surfing this forum, and try to glean from others expertise and mistakes. And above all, don't be in a hurry, and have fun!

Scott

[Von Hoth]

thanks for the advice. This forum is great for this kinda thing.

Why is it that Third Reich collecting has so much fraud? is it because it's politically incorrect so therefore it gets no regulation from authorities?

I find it interesting that like, 90 percent or more of the items you see for sale are fake. that's an unbelievable percentage.

what's freaked up about that is that you don't even see those kind of numbers in the drug trade. I'd say less than 30 percent of drug transactions involve someone getting ripped off.


this is the hardest hobby to adopt by far.


what's worse for me, is that I'd like to collect stuff of the SS Anenerbre (german heritage foundation) which has little info because their headQuarters was completely leveled by bombing.

[Wim Vangossum]

Hi,

Their is one book that is specialized in party pins: "N.S.D.A.P. Enamel" written by Michael F. Tucker. The book goes only about party pins. It contains not much text but lots of quality pictures concerning all variations of these small but important badge.

Regards, Theo

[Von Hoth]

thanks man, your help is greatly appreciated.


wonder if you guys in europe have an upper hand in collecting for us across the pond.

i remember seeing posts on other forums from britts who would train down to where you are and dig around known battles and find rusted machine guns and such. wow, very cool.

[Wim Vangossum]

Shure you can find things under the ground here. Very interesting from an historical point of view. But as a collector I am only satisfied with pieces in an amost perfect, not used condition. Personnely I find that only field equipment may have a well used look. But Uniforms, Awards and parade weapon must be as good as possible for collecting.

About Europe: You can find many interesting medals an uniforms and large quantities of documents from that time period. But the greatest lot of parade weapons found it's way to America. The GI's loved them and were in fact the first collectors in this field. The same story with many personnal items from the big leaders from Nazi-Germany. But due to this souvenir hunting were many from this great historical treasures protected from destroying.

Regards, Theo