einsatsgrupen armband

[MikeP]

Going through the effects of a deceased buddy.
Have not found it yet, but he had a einzatsgruppen armband he got from a vet 50 years ago. The vet hqd a lot of stuff that my buddy and I acquired, including unissued tunics and insignia.

The armband I believe is red with blue letters. I don't recall any tags.

His family would sell this and other items as we find them.
I don't have pics or the armband as yet.
Just wondering how big a deal this piece is and possible value.
I don't collect anymore and follow this stuff out of curiosity.

Thanks for any help.

[Johnny R]

Mike,

If it is real it would be a very very rare piece, these have been faked thousands of times.

[MikeP]

Thanks for that much.
All I can do is say it came from a vet who had a shoestore and had a whole bunch of his souveniers on shelves that you could look over.
He ended up selling most of it to me and my buddy. This about 1963.
I still got a M 24 grenade. I had a unissued M36 tunic with a yellow cardboard tag inside.
There was a marked boot jack along with some jackboots. A bunch of various gear-single items, mostly.


My buddy got the armband and some others and some badges.

I know he kept this armband-I used to give him static on having such a horrible thing.
He came to a very bad end......

There is a pretty good chance this went to the trash. No close relatives and a bunch stuff got trashed before I told anybody about this.

Good story, I guess, but I miss my old pal's company.

[Johnny R]

Loosing friends is always hard, you always have the memories and I try to live part of my life for them as well.

Towards the band there are real ones but for each real one probably 10000 copies. I would suspect copies of things like this were being made very early after the War because of the interest in the Holocaust during the War Crime trials in the late 40's and later etc.

[Texasuberalles]

This about 1963.

Speaking for us folks who have been collecting since the 50's I can promise you there were plenty of fakes even then. I had a friend who collected during and after the war. There were fakes as early as '46 and '47!!

[Chris Lee]

Armband

Mike,
Does the armband look like this