HI Gaston, and welcome to the forum after 4 years of absence :swiss
Actually, this award is like the NSKK badges that i have been on about the past few days. Obviously this badge, is no fantasy. (Neither is the NSKK Kriegskraftfahrerin badge) There are in-wear images known, it is mentioned in period documentation, and certainly was a Third Reich item.
But, little is known about it, and it is found today in many different colors, as well as "variants"
One of these has to be original, but what one? The brown one? well the earliest post war books like R.Kahls for example, do mention only a
brown badge. But which variation of the brown badge?, because on this short thread so far, we have seen 4 variants of the brown badge alone, and none of them were being sold as a repro, they were all being sold as original!
Dealers dont know either, Phillip Militaria is selling the Aurich marked brown badge as real, for €2450.- Weitze says only the unmarked brown badges are good (which ones? there are a few different ones?) etc..
What research has ever been carried out on these? to my knowledge none at all. So all there is right now, are many different opinions, on a very rare badge that seems to be all over the place, found regularly ...
A lack of specific in-depth research has not only gotten us into a real mess today, it has also devalued many items. The only way to settle this debate on the HJ foreigners badge, would be to do a micro analysis of the variants known. If one of them is genuine, a micro analysis will show this straight away. Although the "forensic" part is only really covered in great detail in my
book, i did start an article
here about it a while ago, so that will give you the jist.
The great thing about a micro analysis, is that all reputations are shoved aside, all stories and provenance are disregarded, all post-war publications and collectors magazine articles are ignored, and ONLY the undeniable facts are revealed
Which is what needs to happen now, because these stories we have been told, and all the things we have just accepted as true, are not necessarily all true, as we will find out in the future - starting with the green NSKK badge, and ending with god knows what!