Christopher Ailsby and the Golden HJ Honour Badge with Oak leaves.

Tom Johnson, the Granddaddy of all Daggers - by night - and peddler of cheap crap by day.
Un-frigging-real......... he doesnt just sell fake and fantasy daggers, noooooo - he goes beyond the call of dagger-duty and peddles crap badges too!

Item description:
One of the rarest Third Reich National awards, this badge was stored in a bedroom storage chest in Belgium for over 50 years. The badge, along with several other HJ items, was recently obtained from the nephew of the gentleman who originally acquired the items at the end of WWII. A photograph of this pattern badge appears on page 184 of The HJ, Volume II by John R. Angolia, with the caption, "Minor variation of the Honor Badge w/Oak Leaves". Badge features a stylized oak leaf border surrounding a red & white enameled HJ emblem with black enamel center swastika. Oak leaf border and emblem show only light surface wear with a few hairline cracks to one portion of the white enamel, but no damage to the swastika. Reverse badge features correct safety style pin and is marked, "RZM" and "BM1/122". Reverse is without serial number. An extremely rare badge in superb condition! Exc++ (20208) $1,895.

gotta l♥ve his big, clear images...(sarcasm).

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unbelievable , theres no way he doesnt know its crap, these big sellers feel they have to answer to nobody and can make anything genuine to make a quick buck
 
unbelievable , theres no way he doesn't know its crap, these big sellers feel they have to answer to nobody and can make anything genuine to make a quick buck
I`ve felt this way for a long time, it`s really an insult on the collectors intelligence. The BM1/122 has already been outed in-print as a fantasy mark by people like Klaus Patzwall.
 
it`s really an insult on the collectors intelligence

Yup. Not even the slightest attempt to explain that B. Has anyone read his 'Banter' pages? He turns research by a german Schützenverein into a Robin Hood story about himself. Almost amusing.
 
Someone should report him to the Authorities that oversee the location he is doingbusiness in such as the Better Business Bureau in the USA! He needs to be stopped for the sake of the hobby!!!!! This kind of thing hurts new people from getting into the great world of collecting.
 
Someone should report him to the Authorities that oversee the location he is doingbusiness in such as the Better Business Bureau in the USA! He needs to be stopped for the sake of the hobby!!!!! This kind of thing hurts new people from getting into the great world of collecting.
You cant discredit God, and thats what he and his friend Wittman have convinced the community they are; from the horses mouth:
[SIZE=-1]LTC Johnson's reputation and knowledge on the subject of edged weapons are such that his expertise and authentications are accepted by the collecting community as the final stamp of approval.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]
I suggest; dont get angry, multiple forum postings about the crap they sell wont harm them, take your time, and expose their sordid game in a book dedicated to exposing the crooks of the hobby. You could fill 1000 pages with the junk they have published as original, and the crap they sell as original... that way it would be in-print, and they would NEED to reply. You think they will ever show up on a forum to reply? GOD does not do forums, and as he writes himself, rather cheeky and arrogant, My word is accepted as the FINAL STAMP OF APPROVAL! (its a wonder his head had not exploded yet)

Johnson Reference Books and Militaria
[/SIZE]


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man i need a couple of pain killers now! when i was last in here you were awaiting the book i feared then i would know the outcome, nice to see i want proved wrong!

you certainly have persistence Jo, clearly your a good egg! now give us the book!! :thumb:
 
The second badge in post one, now that better images are available, seems to show the following:
From the obverse image, it is clear that its a 2 piece construction, with rivets or lugs showing through the reverse.
So it is actually then, 2 different items, a messing membership badge, and a casing of unknown metal.

If you observe closely how the membership badge is fitted into the casing, you will see that it has had two sides filed down, to make it fit!
So it is nothing more than a regular HJ membership badge, made from messing, and fitted (forcefully) into a gold colored casing.
A clever combination of period with post war, making it very difficult to say why its fake, because its not actually fake, if the membership badge used is genuine, and it looks to be, then most of it is genuine,
just not genuine in the sense of being a genuine gold HJ Oak leave award. Well thats how i see this badge

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Hi All! What do you think about badge below? It's marked 835 silver, came from one old collecton.

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Hi Diro, and welcome to the HJ forum.
This is the one that C.Ailsby has posted, and published, as being genuine. Personally i dont think anything about it is genuine.
 
I know your opinion about badges with silver mark, but this badge was found in Russia in a very old collection (other badges were 100% originals), and it looks "in hands" like a real item, without a doubt! May be it's time now to recognize, that the sign in silver existed? Ailsby also identified this badge like the original!
 
Hi Diro

The obvious problems here would be:

The author you are referring to, is very unreliable, and the many mistakes he has printed, as well as the many fake badges he has shown in a recent book of his from 2010, have not just been challenged, in recent print, but outed for what they are, as fakes from an author who really does not know that much about the subjects he choses to write about.
See The Party Badge P.506-512

The next problem is that you cannot mass-authenticate. Most websites have good items, and fakes, collections too. Where this item comes from, has nothing to do with anything, and most certainly not a reason to, as you suggest:
May be it's time now to recognize, that the sign in silver existed.

When new, documented evidence is found, tangible facts, then, that is when it is time to debate on something. Not recognize, debate. All the evidence we have to date, and there is quite a bit of it, points to this badge being in nothing else than solid gold, as the few known examples of it show.
 
FROM an OLD COLLECTION, nothing scares me worse than that catch phrase other than vet bringback. Never be sucked in by these dealer ploys investigate make yourself a professional on the item then an only then pull the pin. as JO SAYS there is no period evidence to support this. :canada1
 
the problem is 1945 was nearly 70yrs ago, so how do we define a very old collection, a collection from 50yrs ago can be easily considered a very old collection yet that is still 20yrs after the reich had fallen and in those 20 yrs there was plenty of fakes starting to show up
 
Extremely well said Stu. We have all seen plenty of dodgy items in "old collections" in our day. The item should stand on it's own, period. Where it was sourced from matters not IMO.
 
"Old collection" sounds unconvincing, if to clarify, a man has been collecting an insignia of Third Reich right after war, an in Russia it was a very risky activity! After he died, his family made a decision to sell the collection. and a friend of mine who collects post cards and other antiques, just bought all the items and badges with "hakenkreuz" for me, because he know, that I 'am interested in Reich collecting. Therefore, it was not a dealer, and price for HJ badge was symbolical.

The badge has the “traces of carrying” and it is obvious that badge has been produced in a very high quality, so when I found the pictures of similar Badge on this forum (I mean Stan badge, which came from family), I was very glad, that “a brother” of my badge at last was found!
 
Good morning reality:thumb:

The normal HJ membership badge = HJ Mitgliedsabzeichen
The HJ Honor badge = HJ Ehrenzeichen
The HJ badge in gold with oak leaves = Das Goldene Ehrenzeichen der HJ

So you see, the names actually tell you, that there was not a silver version of this prestigious badge. Documents tell us this, the known examples show us this. And that is all there is to say about it:good:
 
I just added a couple of badges to the thread which lists recipients of the Goldenes Ehrenzeichen der HJ and came up with something of interest for this thread. I'll be lazy and just paste it here:

Garry said:
And another: Gebietsführer Wilhelm Kohlmeyer. He was a member of the Reichstag and his bio says the following:

"...Träger des Goldenen Ehrenzeichens der NSDAP Nr. 23424 und des Goldenen Ehrenzeichens der HJ. Nr. 15"

This is potentially very interesting because we haven't yet accepted that this HJ honour badge had a serial number. I'm thinking here of badges like this:

Golden HJ Honour Badge with Oak leaves.

and this:

Golden HJ Honour Badge with Oak leaves.

Could it be the case that the solid gold versions and badges like those at the above links co-existed after all? Were the solid gold versions simply a higher status version of the same award?

This Gebietsführer knows the serial number of his badge but that number wasn't noted on the award certificate or stamped onto the badge as far as we know (certainly not onto those made of gold). Was he awarded one of the types shown at the above links?

Perhaps it could be argued that because of its colour, people called the normal HJ honour badge "golden HJ honour badge" but even from the very first announcements about this badge on the RJF Verordnungsblatt it was simply called "HJ-Ehrenzeichen. With this in mind, Kohlmeyer's bio seems to be hinting that he did indeed get the oakleaf version. Whether that was in 585 gold or not is something for discussion.
 
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