Medical my arse...

[Dave Suter]

Okay, maybe it's just me, but when I go to a Third Reich militaria dealer's site and he has board(s) for sale with the waffenfarbe & device shown below listed as MEDICAL, I question his ability to correctly identify much of anything - to say nothing of his claims that his stuff is original....

Maybe I am off base, but shouldn't a DEALER know that the MEDICAL insignia is single snake-on-a-stick - NOT the Mercurian staff?

[Bill D.]

The answer is: YES!

[Rick Research]

Oddly enough, in my decades of experience with Clueless Dealers, isn't it just the strangest thing, but their wares are rarely UNDERPRICED?

Apparently ignorance is an enormous Self Esteem Builder!

[derspiess63]

Oddly enough, in my decades of experience with Clueless Dealers, isn't it just the strangest thing, but their wares are rarely UNDERPRICED?

Apparently ignorance is an enormous Self Esteem Builder!

Their items are NEVER underpriced and thei ignorance is only au pair with their greediness!We don't have anything to lose but our money....hard-earned money!!!

[Bjumpa]

I think the mercurian staff was used by the special service officers.

[Drew Wright]

My favorite event like this was 10 or so years ago when a self-described expert wanted to sell me a pair of collar tabs with "SHD" embroidered on them. He told me that was for a very elite unit of "special forces" that were tasked with riding on german airliners to prevent hijackings. The price was a lowly $500...

This guy is still around and some of us may meet him at the SOS next month. Many people think he is very knowledgable as he is very convicted in what he tells you. One of these folks probably has this "rare" set of tabs in their collection right now...

Regards,

Drew

[Robin Lumsden]

Dave.

Proves a point again.

NO dealer knows it all.

Pay attention everyone.

There are NO exceptions

[Chris_Werner]

Amen to that! I have been burned by "Expert" dealers in the past.

[Rick Research]

Hey Drew-- thanks for the "heads up" on these Really Rare Tabs!

Oddly enough, these are part of a "group" that belonged to a WW1 veteran who was in Bremen's civil defense in his 60s during the Second War. Obviously that was just the "cover story" for his REAL job!

[Drew Wright]

Rick:

Yep, those are the ones. I really couldn't believe it when the guy told me this. The only thing I could do at the time was just stare at him blankly in disbelief...

I do not visit this dealer's table any more to learn about rare insignia as he got almost violent one year with me at a show for questioning his opinion on a uniform. I really thought we was going to blow a gasket. He was going on and on to me and a small group of others about a great uniform he had and I asked him why he had the opinion he did on a certain aspect of the item. His reply was because he was stationed in Germany, been collecting for years, blah, blah blah. I then asked, "Ok, all of that aside, what proof/evidence/documentation, etc. do you have to support your opinion?" That's when the veins in his forehead nearly popped open... Really funny as hell both then and now!

Regards,

Drew

[Robin Lumsden]

Rick.

There's a battle royal going on over on the SS forum just now regarding Dachau tabs. It's under the thread headed 'Question for Herr Lumsden'.

Is there any chance of posting these SHD tabs under that thread, showing both the fronts and the backs??

They would help advance one of the arguments.

Cheers.

Robin.

[Matt L]

Maybe I am off base, but shouldn't a DEALER know that the MEDICAL insignia is single snake-on-a-stick - NOT the Mercurian staff?

Nah- far too often dealers have no real idea what they have- it's only a real problem when they claim to be experts. THEN I'd worry about everything.

Technically, the winged staff entwined by two snakes is as perfectly acceptable a Caduceus as the single snake/staff, but indeed isn't the type used by German medical personnel. If I didn't know any better, I'd have thought it medical too...

Matt

[Dave Suter]

Technically, the winged staff entwined by two snakes is as perfectly acceptable a Caduceus as the single snake/staff, but indeed isn't the type used by German medical personnel. If I didn't know any better, I'd have thought it medical too...

Matt

Not hardly! The Mercurian staff was not used by the Third Reich military for anything related to medical. It was used by all the services as an administrative symbol. Period. The Mercurian staff is used TODAY as a medical identifier - but we're talking 1944, not 2004.

YOU may be excused for not knowing better - but if a DEALER wants to have credibility, he should know what he is selling. If he mistaks a TSD board for Medical, what other little gaps in knowledge does he have? Not saying I wouldn't do business with a shop that screwed this up, but I'd sure take anything they said with a much larger grain of salt.