Hello,

Anyone who is a dealer and sends you that amount of blatent fakes should NOT have a decent reputation.

I think he is taking advantage of your limited knowledge and I would send the lot back to be honest.

regards

I will admit I am somewhat disappointed after spending quite a bit on all these badges. Nevertheless if I with your help am able to weed out all the fakes and I get my money back for those and still have 180 or more good originals I can live with it. After 35 years of collecting I have seen my share of sellers flogging bad items - disappointing for sure.

To be quite honest, I do tend to agree with Simon, the individual who offered these clearly must have known that some of them are the most obvious fakes, yet they have been deliberately sold to you.
You have some very pleasing badges, but, there would be much work left to do if you wish to have a representative collection of all the various regiments/corps for the period you are interested in.

I also agree with Simon.

If this was a large lot or an entire collection purchased at auction then this volume of repros to an extent would be excusable for any collection amassed 1970 onwards and therefore an accepted risk in an un-vetted collection.

It is quite a different scenario if a supposed badge dealer has sold all these as purportedly original.

Unfortunately I do not feel like vetting any more given the circumstances. You should have checked before buying rather than asking the forum to work through hundreds of badges to the deadline of the returns policy.

I also agree with the stance that you should send the lot back as like Frank says some are such glaringly obvious fakes this dealer has clearly tried to turn you over. In light of this fact I would not hesitate to name them.

Dear Luke,

Thanks for your post. I am not sure why given the circumstances (which are those?) you do not feel like vetting any more. Of course you are completely free to help me out or not. However reading what you wrote I get the feeling like I am somehow doing something wrong which I am pretty sure I have not done. I checked on the forum if the seller had anything bad written about him and I did not see anything of the sort. He was mentioned several times on the forum as a source for badges and participating in various fairs. So I contacted him told him I was looking for original ww1-era and ww2-era badges and selected these which were on his website and asked him again if these were genuine and correct for the period which he said these were. I then discussed with him returns and he agreed to take back any and all badges without any problems within four weeks after I received these for inspection. I told him I would have these checked out. Then I turned to the forum to get help. I am not sure if people would have responded more possitively if I had posted two hunderd or more links on this forum with the question is this badge ok and only then order it. I fear people would have been turned off by that approach.

As for returning the whole batch - how does that help me? I and others, including you, on the forum have put quite a bit of time into this and so far this has turned up 20 or so fakes which is of course not great when looking at what the seller told me but on the other hand the great majority (at the moment about 90% or more still appears to be genuine). I am not helped by returning the good badges and having to start the whole process again with possibly a similar outcome unless of course someone can refer me to a dealer which without exception sells genuine pieces for reasonable prices.

As for naming the seller I am hesitant to do so as I still need his cooperation in getting my money returned for fake badges and as such am not in a possition to name and shame. I hope you understand this and you and others will continue to help me out as I am just trying to build up a fake free collection of these beautiful badges and with it honour the British Army for its part in liberating us in occupied Europe from the Germans. IMO nothing wrong with that. If you see things differently feel free to let me know. I will also send this post in a pm to you. In any case thank you and others for your help so far.

Cheers, Tom

I do understand the problem you have regarding postage and customs charges which clearly make matters difficult, for me at least it does all come down to money, in particular, how this has been done.
If a flat price was agreed for the whole lot, you simply divide the sum by the number of badges received and you have an average price per badge, but, you are still left with the fakes that will have still cost you more than they are worth, but, yes they could be returned and original replacements added over time in the future.
However, if this seller has given an individual price upon each badge and then added those prices up, you would need to get that amount back, for example, take that really obvious 24th Lancers, if you have been charged £45 for that badge, you get your £45 back and move on, then that's fine.

The issue I would then have would simply be that this seller has very deliberately sold that and the others as original when they are not.

I certainly don't see anything wrong in what you are trying to do though, it is quite humbling that there are people in what was an occupied country who want a display of British Army cap badges.

Hi Frank, THANK YOU for your continued interest and help with my collection in the making. After Luke's post and my reply I send an email to the seller pointing out the number of multi-source confirmed fakes so far (19) and that I was rather disappointed by this as these had been sold to me as originals. Seller replied he would keep his promise and take everything back that was considered bad/undesirable for full money back - so in case of your example 45 GBP paid is 45 GBP returned. As you will understand I am very keen to seperate the bad from the good while I still have the opportunity to get my money back for bad examples. Therefore I hope everyone will continue to help out with this process of selection for which I continue to be very greatful. Cheers, Tom

To sum up the badges so far:

Good:
6 (Wardog and Phil)
7 (Wardog and Phil)
8 (Wardog and Phil)
10 (Wardog and Phil)
13 (Phil)
14 (Wardog and Phil)
15 (Phil)
16 (Phil)
17 (Wardog and Phil)
19 (Wardog and Phil)
23 (Wardog and Phil)
25 (Wardog and Phil)
27 (Phil)
28 (Phil)

Questionable:
9 (Phil)

Bad:
20 (Phil and JT)

Thanks Wardog and Phil! More opinions very much welcome especially on 9 as the authenticity of this one questioned. Thank you.

One of the telltale signs of inauthenticity on the Blackheath & Woolwich (and many other moody badges for that matter) is the anorexic font to the lower scroll. If you'd care to search the forum gallery for other 20th Bn. examples, you'll see what I mean.

Regards,

JT

Hi JT, Just looked and I see what you mean with the font. So if anorexic font = reproduction, that means that the 20th shown here is a reproduction. Noted now as such. Thank you for your contribution. Much appreciated. Cheers, Tom

Tom,

As I am sure many will concur, being able to ID a badge as being dodgy or kosher cannot simply be reduced to a matter of 'either this or that' (and I appreciate that is not what you're saying here). Collectors' knowledge and resources regarding the appraisal of badges comes with years and years of experience, a great deal of which necessarily includes the making of mistakes, occasionally expensive mistakes. There's no better way to learn.

Not all badges with skinny fonts will be fake/repro etc., neither will all badges with fatter fonts be authentic.

FYI, here is an example of an out-and-out fake bearing an appallingly cadaverous font:

Attachment 250941

The font on the The Queen's badge is the type with rounded letter ends and has been used on a number of badge copies. Its a modern looking font that I think has been called a 'TOYS 'R' US' type font. Its a pity not all fakes have such obvious tell tail signs. Regards, Paul. PS late 80s or early 90s I bought a Birmingham Pals badge with that font, back when my only access to badges was via dealers lists. A £40 lesson learnt in the need for me to learn about each individual badge I wanted. The reference book I was using showed the same fake badge.

A fairly unattractive badge that Queen's one - that poor animal looks just sick with all those spots. Yes I agree with you that things are unfortunately not that simple and knowing full well as a 35 plus year collector going on 40 determining authenticity of most militaria requires years of experience. While I am quite comfortable in some fields of militaria I readily admit I am not when it comes to British cap badges. For this reason I am turning to you here on the forum who have probably forgotten more about these badges than I will ever know. So thank you for your help! As for the 20th Bat cap badge I just simplified the issue to be sure that your point was that my example is unfortunately a fake.

You find 2 types - the one piece such as this one

https://www.britishbadgeforum.com/fo...2&d=1620465898

but also a 2 piece one where the lower scroll is attached. Whether this is correct or not I am not sure about.

A bit of a conundrum here. As mentioned, surely a reputable dealer would be well aware of so many blatant fakes in the lot. Many good badges as well, but I am also concerned that many of the good ones are very poor examples, such as would not be posted on a website as discerning collectors would never buy.

CB