HJ sports award in silver-opinions welcome

[sniper11]

Been after one of these HJ proficiency awards for the right price for a while and managed to eventually find one.Opinions welcome.
Troy

[Br. James]

Looks like a good one to me, Troy. Made by the firm of Karl Wurster of Markneukirchen in Gau Sachsen. From the photo of the reverse I'm not sure of the award number on the Ty-Rune; it looks like '16435' but there appears to be another number die-stamped prior to the '1' -- perhaps a '2' -- though I can't quite make that number out.

There were a total of 217,093 Silver HJ Proficiency Badges issued, so either way, this piece was awarded during this series of badges.

Br. James

[sniper11]

Looks like a good one to me, Troy. Made by the firm of Karl Wurster of Markneukirchen in Gau Sachsen. From the photo of the reverse I'm not sure of the award number on the Ty-Rune; it looks like '16435' but there appears to be another number die-stamped prior to the '1' -- perhaps a '2' -- though I can't quite make that number out.

There were a total of 217,093 Silver HJ Proficiency Badges issued, so either way, this piece was awarded during this series of badges.

Br. James

Thanks for the information Br.I had no idea as to how many were awarded.
the award number on mine begins with a 2 .
Cheers
Troy

[Br. James]

Thanks, Troy. That means that your badge example bears award #216,435.

Cheers,

Br. James

[Cracked]

There were a total of 217,093 Silver HJ Proficiency Badges issued, so either way, this piece was awarded during this series of badges.

Br. James

Hi,

Not sure where you got that number from but The Hitler Youth Forum has had a project running for some years now where they match names to badges using the recipient's original paperwork and other period sources. The list for the silver HJ achievement badge shows conclusively that award serial numbers went as high as 649958. Now, these very high numbers date to 1944 and it is debatable whether the physical badge was actually issued with that number visible but even in 1943 when they definitely were being issued the list shows badges in the 500000 range. Just thought I'd add this info because older reference works can be woefully wrong or simply out of touch with current knowledge. The serial number of the badge in post 1 above corresponds to an issue year of 1942.

[Br. James]

Thanks for your response, Cracked, and I fully agree that my information may well be overshadowed by current scholarship. On p.95 of "Orders, Decorations, Medals and Badges of the Third Reich" (published in 1965 by Roger Bender), authors Littlejohn & Dodkins state: "By the end of 1943, 103,061 bronze and 217,093 silver (HJ Proficiency) badges had been awarded. All issued badges are numbered on the reverse."

Thanks for adding new information! Cheers,

Br. James