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**bwanek1** · 05-23-2006, 01:04 PM

Originally posted by DeMil

Thank you very much for your opinions.

So the conclution is that this 155/38 SS eagle is original but finding it with the 38 year produced, it is very rare.
Probably Assmann & Soehne made very few of these eagles in 1938 and that could be the reason they are very hard to find ?

Regards
Derek

I, for one, am not prepared to draw any conclusion just yet. I certainly like what I see, but, just because it is not a "known fake," does not prove it is authentic.

Just to play devil's advocate, I would suggest that if I were a faker, rather than try to duplicate an original exactly, I would create a new "variation" with a different marking. This would allow the gullible to "explain away" differences from known originals (i.e. to declare it a rare/previously unknown type). This explains the 360 and 380 series of contract numbers used on the fakes produced in Austria years ago.

I still like this bird, but I need a few more questions answered before I would buy it if I saw it for sale. One such question would be what the actual start/end dates were for the brief period when solid aluminum was used in the production of SS insignia [yes, Donald, I realize that for every rule there were exceptions and this is far from an exact science, but indulge me here]. If we are to assume, for the sake of argument, that Assmann produced the entire run of production for a given contract during the year indicated by the mark ('36, '42, and now possibly '38), I would want to know if the period in which aluminum was used included 1938.

**Donald Abenheim** · 05-23-2006, 01:44 PM

danke schoen

Originally posted by bwanek1

I, for one, am not prepared to draw any conclusion just yet. I certainly like what I see, but, just because it is not a "known fake," does not prove it is authentic.

Just to play devil's advocate, I would suggest that if I were a faker, rather than try to duplicate an original exactly, I would create a new "variation" with a different marking. This would allow the gullible to "explain away" differences from known originals (i.e. to declare it a rare/previously unknown type). This explains the 360 and 380 series of contract numbers used on the fakes produced in Austria years ago.

I still like this bird, but I need a few more questions answered before I would buy it if I saw it for sale. One such question would be what the actual start/end dates were for the brief period when solid aluminum was used in the production of SS insignia [yes, Donald, I realize that for every rule there were exceptions and this is far from an exact science, but indulge me here]. If we are to assume, for the sake of argument, that Assmann produced the entire run of production for a given contract during the year indicated by the mark ('36, '42, and now possibly '38), I would want to know if the period in which aluminum was used included 1938.

Surely your skepticism is healthy with all of this stuff. This is a sound question for which there is an easy answer, i.e. yes. I collect black SS headwear (look on the other website...I do not collect Pz material, but mostly the pre-war things), that is, the badges in their setting. Via various means one can date the cap (stamps on the cap, the RZM tag &c.) and likely the badges, especially in the era 1938----a time in which much SS headwear got produced. I have never seen one of these badges in wear, but I am a proud and longstanding owner of the Assmann catalog (in which there is no generalization about the contents of said badge itself...) but the Assmann catalog makes clear that in many cases, a given piece of regalia came in various finishes, composition, &c. Further, I have owned various black SS officer caps with alu & kupal insignia especially from the era 1938. Aluminum was a big deal Werkstoff in the mid-1930s Germany, if you look at various trade magazines for the war economy (Der Vierjahresplan...)

My point above is quite simple. Various figures write a list based on far less than the whole picture of things, and then this list becomes dogma in a way that is misleading. No one can deny to me how this phenomenon operates and I wish to point out based on my own experience how little we actually know about any of this in fact. My statement is something other than there is an exception to every rule. Rather, I suggest that many of the rules are themselves quite dubious, and should be treated only as a kind of wild guess and not much more. I am sure this suggestion greatly upsets many here, but the more you adhere to dogma and doctrine, the more the reality of all of this shall make a fool of all of us. Maybe the point is too arcane, but the great pleasure of all of this is how much new data pours in. I should also think that Scandinvia, and especially Finland would be a good place to find some authentic badges. I am also fully conscious of the mischeif there, as well, and the geographical proximity to other areas of larceny and chaos as regards little bits of metal. sapere aude. Postscriptum God willing, I shall retire to a life in the Bundesarchiv in Berlin and then the first order of business shall be to decipher how the Verwaltungsamt SS system of contracts worked, in fact. That is, does 155/36 mean that the contract was let in that year, or the regalia itself made in that year? God knows I have seen a pile of Assmann buttons with the 155 contract # on black SS uniforms. I also do not have the sense that the Verwaltungsamt SS contract # were subcategorized as in the post-1935 system of the RZM M1/x, M5/x, M7/x in which there were a variety of different numbers for the same firm. But I do not know any of this via having looked at the primary sources from the dead hand of some bureaucrat who worked for Oswald Pohl. However, I do know the names of some of these men, who must have known all of this, and that is the place to begin such a search in the files of the Verwaltungsamt SS which seem to have survived to this day and which surely will reveal their secrets to the 21st century....sapere aude

**bwanek1** · 05-23-2006, 03:12 PM

.

**bwanek1** · 05-23-2006, 03:19 PM

Whew! That was a lot to digest. Let me see if I can translate all of that. In answer to my question:

Yes, Brad, aluminum was used in 1938.

I believe the rest roughly translates to:

...and the known variences defy attempts to apply strict (and often even general) rules as such.

Did I get it right, Donald?

**Donald Abenheim** · 05-23-2006, 07:29 PM

janz richtig!

Originally posted by bwanek1

Whew! That was a lot to digest. Let me see if I can translate all of that. In answer to my question:

Yes, Brad, aluminum was used in 1938.

I believe the rest roughly translates to:

...and the known variences defy attempts to apply strict (and often even general) rules as such.

Did I get it right, Donald?

Completely, in fact. A worthwhile investment in these matters is the reprint of the Assmann catalog. It contains next to no data of interest on SS cap badges, but, in a general sense, it has a wealth of information on other regalia. This material is germane to our own field of inquiry.

**derek** · 05-23-2006, 08:26 PM

Aluminium badge from a 1936 SS catalogue listing
http://img55.imageshack.us/img55/539...ist19366mr.jpg

**Donald Abenheim** · 05-23-2006, 10:35 PM

Siehe da! eine Primaerquelle!

Originally posted by derek

Aluminium badge from a 1936 SS catalogue listing
http://img55.imageshack.us/img55/539...ist19366mr.jpg

Just the sort of thing I had in mind in my post above. And where is the correspondence that lay behind the price list, the bureaucrats who formulated it; contracted with x- firms, &c? I wager some of these files still exist in German or other archives, in fact, but none of us has found them yet, unless it is all in the Saris-Spronk book from Bender of most recent origin.

**SScollector** · 05-24-2006, 09:52 PM

Hello fellow bird collectors.

I would love to have that eagle in my collection and I will certainly try
very hard to find it.
So, it has a previously unseen year, (what's the big deal about that)?
New variations are always turning up. It is a very rare variation
and there is absolutely nothing incorrect or wrong with any part of this eagle.

Sloppy RZM and SS marks are found on most of the SS eagles.
Of course, (as Kevin stated), there will be differences in each reverse
die, just as there are between the "36" reverse die, and the "42" reverse die, as stated above. The key here, is that the front of the eagle was stamped from the correct Assmann die and that there is absolutely nothing wrong, or even questionable in my mind, with the reverse.
In fact, everything about this eagle makes perfect since to me.
Also, remember that even though it is says "38", that doesn't
mean that it was made in 1938, even though it very well
could have been. These dies were usually used more than one year,
(this is why we don't see too many different years.

Brad, the solid "zig-zag edges" are found on most of the M1/17 eagles,
including the aluminum ones.

Anyway, congratulations to Derek, and if you ever decide that you don't like it, then just remember that I will be looking for this one, until I find one, and it is a priority piece.

Best, Chris

**Donald Abenheim** · 05-24-2006, 10:22 PM

consensus

Well I am glad that colleague McClurkan is on board with this one. Someone should make a photo file of all the known SS contract #'s on regalia, considering how many there are. Colleague Hassler has a marvelous kidney warmer for motocyclists with an RFSS tag and an SS contract # on his website. The examples of this kind of thing abound. What is interesting, though, is one seldom or indeed never finds a Verwaltungsamt SS contract # on peaked caps, or there is none I can readily think of. Someone correct me here. That is, the cap itself. I have seen same on Schiffchen and whatnot, but not peaked caps. In any case, this alu. Assmann piece is striking and its images are a great boon to our collective struggle to learn more about the past.

**DeMil** · 05-25-2006, 07:07 AM

Originally posted by SScollector

Hello fellow bird collectors.

I would love to have that eagle in my collection and I will certainly try
very hard to find it.
So, it has a previously unseen year, (what's the big deal about that)?
New variations are always turning up. It is a very rare variation
and there is absolutely nothing incorrect or wrong with any part of this eagle.

Sloppy RZM and SS marks are found on most of the SS eagles.
Of course, (as Kevin stated), there will be differences in each reverse
die, just as there are between the "36" reverse die, and the "42" reverse die, as stated above. The key here, is that the front of the eagle was stamped from the correct Assmann die and that there is absolutely nothing wrong, or even questionable in my mind, with the reverse.
In fact, everything about this eagle makes perfect since to me.
Also, remember that even though it is says "38", that doesn't
mean that it was made in 1938, even though it very well
could have been. These dies were usually used more than one year,
(this is why we don't see too many different years.

Brad, the solid "zig-zag edges" are found on most of the M1/17 eagles,
including the aluminum ones.

Anyway, congratulations to Derek, and if you ever decide that you don't like it, then just remember that I will be looking for this one, until I find one, and it is a priority piece.

Best, Chris

Hi Chris.

I will have you in mind if I decide to sell it

Here in Norway we often find SS capeagles and skulls. We find them on antique markets, second-hand markets, from SS veterans and resistance veterans etc. Not so often as before but I find 2-3 capeagles/skulls every year to nice prices, without buying from collectors or military dealers for up to $ 500,- each.

Regards
Derek

**Donald Abenheim** · 05-25-2006, 11:50 AM

God bless Norway

Here in California we DO NOT FIND SS cap eagles in any other configuration than extremely expensive, if the piece is authentic. What we do find are tons of creepy fakes. We celebrate your good fortune.

**SScollector** · 05-25-2006, 07:55 PM

Yes, thanks for sharing the images, and please continue to post any other eagles and/or skulls that you find, especially if they are rare or unique.

Best, Chris

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