Well what I thought of ending off with, was something similar to the previous videos, with a few pointers as to what to look for. NO, not a feather or a shoulder
, remember these (genuine) badges are zinc, and zinc can deform at the slightest fart, so if there happened to be wear and tear or a "rim tap" (or corrosion) on the part you were supposed to be looking at - strike that -
on the part that the go-to men have told you to go to, then what else would you use?
I would also be turning myself into a go-to man on these, just a more modern,
micro-assisted go-to man, because sad facts are that many collectors are not interested, and only want the quick guide. They want something like a "look at the shoulder, if it looks like X, that means stay away, if it look slike Y, that means it is genuine".
And so while playing around with those innitial thoughts, I gathered a few examples of these from the web and forums. I have only examined the one in the videos, but what is crystal clear, is that there are quite a few versions of these, and not just a cast fake and a die-struck good one.
What`s also clear just from the images, is that the majority of them cannot be real.
There are a few reasons why, common sense plays a major part, but as you`ve just seen with this video, it really is this easy to fool collectors. I did not read anything about these fakes being CAST, anywhere? And like it or not -
I know some collectors do still cling onto the hope that some awards and membership badges were cast - being CAST, means automatically that an item like this cannot possibly be genuine. And you can see it is poorly cast with a magnifying glass, even if you did not understand anything about machine milling.
So instead of saying anything, I just left it. I don`t collect these, I don`t care, and I have just proved that noone has ever looked at (even) one of these cast fakes in detail, so it stands to reason then, that they have also not looked at any of the so-called genuine ones either.
The few dealers who are asking 200-300 squid for the fake, will still be selling them in years to come, there are still going to be people who even after seeing how the fake is made, will cling to it being genuine (hence me adding the CAST LEAD pin on WAF into this video - just to prove my point) so what would be the point to just Ra Ra on about the others?
To show the mess? No need, the whole hobby is a mess.
So hopefully I ended that video the right way, leaving collectors with a nice warm feeling, that it was only until very recently, when a clever cloggs came along and decided to machine-mill his own dies for these so he could cast copies of a single-piece badge. And that the zinc Gausieger 1944 remained untouched for the first 60-odd years, while everything else around them was being faked, including complicated multi-piece items.