Graf Spee threads

[compressore]

Seller says:

Payment is by bank transfer which is still very common on E-Bay Germany as a lot of people do not use paypal.

On other items he sells, he guarantees the originality.

For me he looks not like a scammer.

Regards
Christian

[JustinG]

I believe with the reverse stitching and construction, this is a period tally for me. John Robinson, Could you share your reasons what spooked you about this particular piece?
Has the looping typically seen on an officially produced tally.

Regards,
JustinG

[John R.]

I will get back to you later but the pinned thread indicates differences in this tally with what we have seen with other cotton examples. I am not sure about it as stated in the Lakeside Trader tally thread.

John

[John R.]

More later but with Graf Spee scuttled in Dec. 1939, I do not think there were any cellon tallies manufactured. At least, I am not aware of any.

Cotton for some reason are also rare IMO with the great majority gold wire. Therefore, any GS tally not gold wire needs to be studied very carefully against cotton tallies of any type to be sure it is consistent with those tallies.

Maybe Marine HJ has a cotton (artificial silk) tally he can post, I do not have one from GS. He might.

Even if GS did have cellon examples, this one is not consistent with cellon either, but we can disregard it in this case since we are only looking for cotton or gold wire examples.

The pinned thread has many examples of cellon, gold wire and cotton for study.

John

[Norm F]

I found a previous thread with a cotton tally posted by m-e-h-t here:
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=740943

I took some excerpts of ebay tally and compared them to equivalent excerpts of m-e-h-t's tally. Clearly these are different in the details. I tried to scale them to equivalent ribbon heights which illustrates that the font of the ebay tally is wider.

Best regards,
---Norm

[Norm F]

reverse. close but different.

[John R.]

Good comparisons Norm. John

[Norm F]

But here's something interesting. The ebay tally seems to be the same type as the cutoff one that was posted by Paul from Lakesidetrader in this thread:
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=812593

I wonder where Paul got his.

[John R.]

Spoke too quickly due to the different flash settings on the shots. I stated my opinion on the other thread.

In regards to the Lakeside Trader tally, it was sewn onto a pillowcase making it a probable period tally I guess but like this one, extremely uncommon. Maybe a post sinking tally, produced after cellon was introduced.

It still does not exactly match cellon but cellon is very tricky and I do not collect them except for Prinz Eugen.

I will try to find out more with Bernd Wedeking in Germany.

John

[CSForrester]

My two cents - i think the one on ebay is a period original, woven with yellow artificiral silk. Official issue between 1937 and 1939.

Those were produced by more than one company and show small differences in the shape of each letter. The seller made the mistake to take the photos not from vertikal above, more from the side, so the yellow thread seems to have more -density (?) (Dichte) than the one compared here.
These tallies also have a different look if they are washed and ironed or not.
Best way is to compare some original "Kriegsmarine" cap ribbons, period items show often small differences in the length of inscription and shape of letters.

The differences to postwar commemorative issues or fakes are more significant.
And the material is not cellon at all.

Regards
Markus

[John R.]

Thanks Markus for your opinion. Good to hear from you again.

I have notified Paul at Lakeside Trader of Markus' post and hopefully he still has that example in his possession.

Somebody should also notify the seller on German ebay of this discussion so he does not lose his tally for just a few euros. If somebody does contact that seller, please let us know here that it was done.

Thanks Justin for challenging the opinion on this tally and I hope we will be able to further discuss this example in this thread.

Norm, thanks for finding the Lakeside Trader example for comparison.

I will post the reply from Bernd when he gets back to me and also try to get Dani Falk who also thought it was postwar, to post.

John

[John R.]

If somebody that is registered on ebay.de and would make him aware of this thread and let us know, I would appreciate it.

Very often on this forum we attack ebay sellers for selling fakes, sending them messages that their item is not from the wartime period.

This is an example of where a seller has stated he does not know what he has and we can assist that seller to make sure he does not sell a valuable wartime item for just a few euros. In other words, he should remove that item from sale until he has studied this thread.

If period, he can easily sell this tally to Weitze for quite a bit of money.

So, if somebody here is registered on ebay.de, please let us know if the seller has been notified.

John

[CSForrester]

I have just send a message to the seller on ebay-Deutschland.

Regards
Markus

[John R.]

Paul, as I said I was not sure about that tally. It is now considered to be a cotton example:

http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=855948

John

[CSForrester]

Two scans from my saved files, deep dark areas are lightet up, so the black tallies seem to be more dark grey.

Regards
Markus