Fake Indian badges on eBay
 

A senior collector just warned me about this lot on eBay. The sikh badges are fake..The numerals are all wrong..Some others are good though

There is a Burma Rifles badge amongst them but as they are all badly photographed I cannot tell if it is a good one.

Yes Simon, some badges maybe good, but bad photo so hard to tell. I liked the 15 Madras but has a shiny, chrome look so don't know. I expect some of these will come up piecemeal on eBay again.

Even the Romans would see that those Sikh badges are idiotic. :mad:

The price strikes me as either optimistic in the extreme or idiotic as well. One would hope that anybody with that kind of money to spend on badges would do enough research to realize that these are bad'uns. :(

The screen shot shows that there were 14 bids taking the price to £330. I have no idea what the final figure was.

The seller had 2 lots:

this one had 17 bids on and closed at £425.00
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Indian-In...-/254487745646

The second one had 8 bids and closed at £260.99
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Indian-Re...-/254487746021

The detailed photos there confirm that the one badge has VX instead of XV end the other one has XIVII instead of XLVII.:D

BTW, I have never seen anywhere that the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs were ever "Royal" :confused:

"The detailed photos there confirm that the one badge has VX instead of XV end the other one has XIVII instead of XLVII."

Back in the '80s some enterprising chap in India/Pakistan started repro-ing Great War era badges of the old IA. He used as his source existing badges and one set of dress regulations from the period which included a major typo: the 3/5th GR were described/titled the '35th Gurkha Rifles'. For some time these 'incredibly rare' 35th badges showed up as far away as England, before some clever chappy figured out the source of the 'confusion'. :(

:) Yes, then almost everything is possible.

The 15th Ludhiana Sikhs became the 2nd Battalion 11th Sikh Regiment in 1922. In 1935 they were made a "Royal" battalion in recognition of services rendered.

Thanks for the explanation. Thus speaking about the 15th Royal Ludhiana Sikhs is incorrect, but 2nd (Royal Ludhiana Sikhs) Battalion, 11st Sikh Regiment is correct.

Yes. That is correct :)

One of his other offerings include a set of 3 Ceylon Tea Planters badges which I always thought were very rich and rare. £90 and 10 hours to go!! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CEYLON-AR...oAAOSw9wxeXDHk

'I ha' me doots.'

The photo is too small to be very helpful and the only example I ever handled that I believed was real - decades ago - was thickly coated in black paint, so whatever it was made of - brass, pot metal, old tin cans - was undetectable. A boon for the would be 'repro' artist, I'd think.