Third Party Press

What is considered to be rare in 3R collecting?

Good points MJ, Farb. My impression of the humped medal / decorations thing is that it started up well after the war, and started to flourish in Eastern Europe in the 90s. That's when the big shows started being awash in the stuff, higher end too. There would have been no need, nor the ability, to hump these things immediately post war.
 
Thank you Micro Jo. Great points. This idea is something I have always heard at gun shows but wasn't sure how true it was. Thanks!
 
All fake, up until recently, I used to send orders out wrapped in huge uncut sheets of "the covers" that were used for them. Like the uncut banknote sheets, I had a few uncut Volksturm book cover sheets.

Interesting, thanks Jo
 
Good points MJ, Farb. My impression of the humped medal / decorations thing is that it started up well after the war, and started to flourish in Eastern Europe in the 90s. That's when the big shows started being awash in the stuff, higher end too. There would have been no need, nor the ability, to hump these things immediately post war.


Indeed, all of sudden in the 1990's the big medal dealers like Detlev Niemann, famous of his COA, discovered huge overstocks.
Odd to say the least.
 
.... have certainly come into the hands of collectors, who already existed at that time..
Indeed, even "Collector`s Groups" existed. here are two documents I have for the "Sammeln am Feierabend- Historische Dokumente" KDF Group, aquiring 1936 Olympic medals and badges in 1941! There were others too. And there are of course plenty of mentions of people collecting, and even images of collections in the UM and later DuZ papers.
This is one of the reasons why they clamped down on the shops to only sell decorations to people who presented the appropriate paperwork.
But in the beginning you can believe that many people could and did "aquire" decorations and items they were not entitled to, or allowed to get.
7-5-2015_002 Kopie.jpg7-5-2015_003 Kopie.jpg
 
Yes, but Micro Jo, what if the medal has WAF Philly Cat Provenance? Wouldn't this be as good as "Self Authenticating?". The added bonus to the Philly Cat Provenance would be WAF Rah Rah, so a medal with this Provenance would be 200% original then? I mean, they said the only controversy over the originality is that they don't own it. How can you dispute that when it comes to Nazi medals? Your mere magnified physical observations are better than Philly Cat?

http://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/forums/showthread.php?t=940836
 
Even better then the Waf Ra-RA, is perhaps a worthless COA of D.Niemann who closed shop in 2010.
:laugh:
 
Even better then the Waf Ra-RA, is perhaps a worthless COA of D.Niemann who closed shop in 2010.
:laugh:
You know that`s also a reason I was booted from the WAaaaf. I was talking too much about Niemann. Because, there are a group of die hard Niemann fans that claim - each time a pathetic fake is shown together with a CoA from him, that "Oh the CoA is faked.. there are hundreds of fake CoAs known from him." So I challenged them to show me one bit of evidence - from the horses mouth - that a CoA from Niemann had ever been faked? Nobody could, it was all Ra-Ra.
Collectors are quick to invent stories to cover him and the crap he sold over the years. Even going so far as to scream, blue murder that it is "well known" that his CoAs have been faked before.
It is not, they are not faked, that is all collector BS, from die hards that need to keep his legacy going, keep his image clean.
He did some real damage to the hobby, and his telephone-directory books are full of fakes too. His price guides are useless, and the truth of the matter is, as you say, that his CoAs are worthless! Niemann became what he became, because those who bought from him, spun the Ra-Ra, and put him onto the pedestal he was on.
He was the inventor of the Friday feeding frenzy, where collectors had no more than a few seconds to press BUY NOW, otherwise they`d miss out on a great deal from the "Famous Detlev."
They were suckered for sure, but it was all their own doing. I never bought so much as a hair pin from the guy.
He was also a WAF member, and would ban you from his site if he found you talking whack about him.
 
You know that`s also a reason I was booted from the WAaaaf. I was talking too much about Niemann. Because, there are a group of die hard Niemann fans that claim - each time a pathetic fake is shown together with a CoA from him, that "Oh the CoA is faked.. there are hundreds of fake CoAs known from him." So I challenged them to show me one bit of evidence - from the horses mouth - that a CoA from Niemann had ever been faked? Nobody could, it was all Ra-Ra. Collectors are quick to invent stories to cover him and the crap he sold over the years. Even going so far as to scream, blue murder that it is "well known" that his CoAs have been faked before.......

Substantive, truthful, transparent debate is denied. Thus, people reading such threads about these topics assume they are getting the prevailing "conventional advanced collector wisdom" when they are not. They are getting what certain people want them to see and believe. So the nonsense that "Niemann COAs are faked" is sprayed about apparently unchallenged, thus it must be true. IMHO, if WAF was the only game in town, the Champagne Rune would still be original because Hicks says so and XRFacts would still have value and used in authenticating helmets.
 
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Thank you Micro Jo. Great points. This idea is something I have always heard at gun shows but wasn't sure how true it was. Thanks!

Same here with the stories, I heard that things like daggers and such were faked right after the war. Thank you Micro Jo and Farb for taking the time to share your thoughts and knowledge. It’s always great to hear different perspectives especially with facts.
 
Thank you Micro Jo. Great points. This idea is something I have always heard at gun shows but wasn't sure how true it was. Thanks!

Same here with the stories, I heard that things like daggers and such were faked right after the war. Thank you Micro Jo and Farb for taking the time to share your thoughts and knowledge. It’s always great to hear different perspectives especially with facts.
 
Same here with the stories, I heard that things like daggers and such were faked right after the war. Thank you Micro Jo and Farb for taking the time to share your thoughts and knowledge. It’s always great to hear different perspectives especially with facts.

It is my understanding edged weapon parts didn't have to be made they were parts bins of them at Soligen most cannot agree (Even Johnson) when these things got assembled so it is possible from Atwoods old bw pictures of all the parts he found in early 60's that was the case I know the earlier assembled SA daggers for instance had original grips and the later ones plastic or bakelite after they ran out of original grips the example I have has period wooden orig grips and orig crossguards but a BA marked blade that is post war. Medals and badges I usually stayed away from for reasons MJ has laid out. It is interesting to note that most of the good copies in the 70 through 90 were Spanish made could be as stated tough German laws on Swaz. timothy
 
Substantive, truthful, transparent debate is denied.
Yes, just the daggers section on WAaaaaf says it all. A dealer and Wittmann helper as Mod, the others that chime in on topics like the fantasy BDM, fantasy HJ-Reichsparteitage, fantasy HJ-Olympic and fantasy DJ knives, are all dealers too, and worse, all part of the Wittmann club. Robert Iqbal of Collector to Collector Militaria, Ron Weinands and so on. All of them are not only part of Tom`s club, but have also all sold the same fantasy knives! (And shilled for them for years on multiple threads) So it stands to reason that anything that goes against what these dinosaurs claim, will get whitewashed in their favour.
After all, the poor saps that have bought these fantasy products from them over the years, are all watching, reading...
:facepalm:
And let`s not forget the golden forum rule about advertising. When you whore your platform out and take dealer money for ad`s, you automaticaly become bias. And when those filling your wallet are left to run the show... well :facepalm:
 
I've heard the stories of people assembling daggers postwar using (mostly) original parts. It seems weird to me that that fakes didn't appear until a while after the war. Fake Japanese flags began turning up pretty early on, but those are easy enough to make I guess.
 
It is my understanding edged weapon parts didn't have to be made they were parts bins of them at Soligen most cannot agree ....
Don`t forget that every kind of dagger was forbidden to be produced in early 1943. Only fighting knives/bayo`s etc were allowed. (No more SS daggers, no more SA, no more HJ knives and so on, nothing. And this law was never lifted.
Parts would have been around I guess, but the "edged weapon production" in Germany came to a more or less full stop, in early 1943.
Surely any large quantities of parts (that were no longer needed and could not be sold obviously) would have been recycled during the last two years. Everything was for these "Metal collections" even flag pole tops and houshold scrap metals... I can`t see how any maker could afford to just have huge quantities of parts laying around that he could not sell, not use, when the country was going tits up fast, and everything was rationed and being collected to be recycled.

What I have found useful many times when looking at these things as they would pertain to medals and badges, (just to get a basic idea of exactly what was still left, on offer, available etc..) are the adverts placed in magazines by dealers, in particular the medal industry papers, of factories and dealerships offering surplus this and that... as well as the "wanted" adverts.
It seems very much like the "Reichs Tit" dried up towards the end on all fronts.
 
Well yeah I for one have always been suspicious of the Atwood stories peddled by his sons Dagger prince and latter kings after his scam went away and they took over the crown you are correct dress bay, dagger and swords went by the wayside sometime before 43 or so and the metal was used for war needs army daggers and swords were not to be worn sometime in 44 except special instances and parade. Have you ever noticed how these modern dagger kings all band together? I think they learned that from old Major Jim they would hawk his pictures in books of pieces he sold as gospel Atwood even produced literature and books to promote his own so called finds kind of like the same thing with the Champagne rune deal but they are in the experts book! These guys do band together and I have known guys that have seen their Low ball buys at walk ins shows and there motel buy scams which are all but kaput in the internet age as people can look up the value themselves and no longer have to depend on the expert crooks offering pennies on the dollar for their items. timothy
 
To sum it up for the German army bravery medals and awards:
- A pretty low award percentage.
- Most likely limited overstock(s).
- No production just after the wars end.
- An avalanche of medals and badges that hit the market in the 1990's together with bogus dealer written COA, reference works written by collectors and an information censoring online forum which held a monopoly on the online information gathering.
The result: medals and badges for everyone: Rah-Rah, Wow, You got to have that! & most important "It is all authentic".

Collectors do your math!
And watch out for Philly Cat.
 
I'll keep it simple for Rare. I would be happy with a running Tiger Tank in the back yard!

Most German armoured vehicles just end up the scrap heap, local sometimes took of the wheels or other bits and pieces they could use on their farm but the rest was thrown in the furnace to be recycled.
The La Gleize King Tiger only survived because the locals wanted a tourist attraction for their little village and they bought it back from the scrap dealer.
 

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