DLV and mystery badge!

[Mike Bollow]

Greetings!

What are these two badges and (the question everybody loves) what are they worth??

Thanks

[Duzig]

Hello,
No expert here but I believe both of these badges to be reproductions. The DLV badge usually has open area on it if I remember correctly and am not sure about it having rzm markings on it, also the pin assembly is incorrect I believe. The other badge looks like the eagle from the social welfare(?) decorations but I don't believe that a badge like this ever existed. Others with more expertise might have more precise info
Duzig

[Mike Bollow]

Duzig -

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on these. It's almost impossible that they are repros, however because they are a part of a 40 year old collection I just aquired, straight from the widow of the collector. Medals, standarts, and more... they haven't even seen sunlight in 20 years.

ALSO... you can't see in the photo very well, but "2 - 50" is stamped in the reverse above the RZM. I saw a copy of this on Manions and it had no separate number and the pin was in a different location. Perhaps it was a copy of this type?

Best regards - Mike

[sjl]

Sorry - they are both repros. The DLV was not under the RZM and should not be marked with the RZM logo. This is a well known fake badge that has been around for years.

As Duzig says, the other badge is a fantasy made to look like the eagle portion of a social welfare decoration - never existed on its own.

The pin backs ae a dead giveaway of a post-war fake - not a period set up.

As they say - buy the badge, not the story. I don't know how many "vet acquired" badges have shown up here that are fakes. Sorry.

[burgerhaus]

I concur completely. Sixties repros both. Robert

[Mike Bollow]

Fakes! Verdammt!!

Isn't it amazing that somebody would bother to fake such a lame badge? I mean, a Panzer Assault I can understand... but THESE?

Thank you everybody for the help!

Mike B.

[Don Scowen]

Sorry for coming in late but I thought I'd just add that I agree with my colleagues above, all bad I'm afraid.

Cheers
Don

[sjl]

Robert makes a good point - 40 years ago was only the 1960s (seems like yesterday to me as time marches on). I have repro catalogs from the 1960s with everything under the sun in them. WWII Inc. had a 100 page book of repro items that could be had by mail order for a couple of bucks each - some terrible copies, others not bad. These two are in the catalog.

Low end badges don't get the same scrutiny as expensive items and sell like hotcakes at gun shows, flea markets and junk shops to kids, vets and starting collectors. We live in an age where $10 tinnies are being reproduced, and some are almost half a century old now.

It seems that more than a few vets bought fake badges - maybe to make up for not picking up enough souvieners when over there in '45 (they had other things on their minds at the time), or just out of nostalgia while walking around a flea market or show at the Legion hall.

There are stories of badges being made after 1945 simply to satisfy the needs of GIs who wanted to trade for them with the locals, but found there wasn't much of a supply left as everyone flushed the originals down the toilet. I know of a Knights Cross with oakleaves and swords that hangs in an officers' mess as German occupation war booty, but is a cast fake - 60+ years old!

Part of what makes this hobby so exciting .

[all1knew]

another fake utilizing unfinished edges, a similar reverse pin assembly, and false patina.

William Kramer

[Ron C.]

Duzig -

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on these. It's almost impossible that they are repros, however because they are a part of a 40 year old collection I just aquired, straight from the widow of the collector. Medals, standarts, and more... they haven't even seen sunlight in 20 years.

20 years from 2007, makes it only 1987 (I had actively quit dealing with stuff a few years before due in part to such things), and 40 years before would make it 1967. I already had to watch what showed up due to what another guy here already said....an outfit called WW2 Inc., Limited or whatever, and also some others; however, even beyond that in the 1950s......kids age 11 and up (I was 11 in 1950 barely toward the end) could get repros of some things. It was better in the mid-40s, like when I started in 1946 when I was barely 6 years old or thereabouts; however, even then it was really rough. Herr Umlauf of Rudolph Souval K.G. was running the shop in Vienna, turning out replacements for soldiers who had lost their medals during the war, and at that time the original dies were still good, and there were still left over materials from the war, and the same workers in the shop..........and they turned them out. Some of the GIs stationed in the occupation forces bought things from the shop and brought them home as "trophies captured in war" (which they were not), but I ask you how do you tell a medal made before the war ended from one made 2 weeks after it ended by the same people out of the same material, and on the same machines with the same dies from the "real" one? Souval never stopped making the stuff, their dies just later wore out and etc..

Now maybe you can understand why I liked not "mint" stuff, but stuff with actual wear and brought back by a real vet, and not found as part of a "hoard"...........and also maybe why I stopped actively collecting.

Just my two cents for what it is worth......I am no expert.

Ron