Third Party Press

latest epay monstrosity find

grimlin13

Senior Member
Why oh why? This piece of offal is being offered up as "mint". The handle is laughable, wrong wood ( should have bakelite grips anyway) and the screws are out of place. The thing that gets me is the maker and serial number stamps are so deep and appear to be made with a solid one piece stamp. The font looks off. Humparific and why?
 

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Made in China, a recent reproduction that has been aged. There are also other examples with different makers' names; some with ugly plastic grip scales and others wood like seen here. The frog is a recent reproduction as well. "Mint" the most inaccurate and overused word on the internet .....
 
A zero feedback seller offers a "mint" WWII bayonet up for auction. What could possibly go wrong?
 
I don't know much about edged weapons, and even I can tell that's junk! The recess on the blade is a dead giveaway. Has anyone posted one of these fakes thinking it was real?
 
I saw that P.O.S. the day it got listed. Tried to figure out just how bad the thing was until realizing I had better things to do than waste time on it. Yet, the last time it crossed my path there were 12 bids on it nonetheless. A fool and their money are soon parted...
 
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possible someone copied the 43ffc and serials with letter from real piece, and made more as one piece, b.r.Andy
 
I hope the reproductions stay that bad. Pieces like that would only fool the uninformed. My guess is that the uninformed could just google pictures of that maker/year and should have alarms going off in their head.
 
Watch out for these scabbards as well. Recently listed for sale as original on a major dealer's web site. He did change the listing after it was posted on a forum with questions and several collectors (including members here) correctly identified it as post-war. But that was only after some spirited discussion regarding crude late war construction, etc. The bayonet is original and a nice example. These have been around for quite some time but still show up. One was very recently listed for sale as original on WAF as an example. Many problems to include:

- No serial number (this is seen occasionally on original examples however)
- incorrect scabbard mouth shape
- Wrong screw for throat assembly and placed too low on body
- Incorrect frog hanging hook assembly
- Improper font for cof44 and again placed too low on the body
- Incorrect construction method for the scabbard shell
- Overall incorrect shape of the scabbard shell especially to the lower taper
- Improperly applied and shaped finial ball
- Incorrect style and poorly detailed WaA stamp to ball
 

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Excellent expose, Slash! I have seen a few of these (only online) in the past. The thing I notice immediately as a tell-tale giveaway is the shape of the frog stud "foot". If this repro 'bard finds a market, I have no doubt "cof 44" will only be the first of many other codes & dates to follow. However, the threat is really to the novice collector. Unfortunately, with (often intentionally) mediocre or poor photographs of such items online, even some advancing collectors could get suckered.

While on the subject of photographs, I recall some years back getting a notification from Ebay that my photos (taken with a Sony Mavica FD73 which I still use to this day) were sub-standard due to the pixel count. They were setting a new standard because smart phone users could not get enough detail when viewing the merch on their itty-bitty screens. Fast forward to today, and you find some of the biggest offenders providing poor photographs are those same people! If you were active online in the 1980s, you might recall digital cameras were not a cheap proposition. So, some sellers resorted to using a scanner instead to post images to their listings and they were beyond bad...!
 
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