West Yorkshire Regiment.
 

I have had what I thought to be a right West Yorkshire Regiment cap badge for some years but have never been entirely happy with it. I bought a second West Yorkshire cap badge this morning and putting the two together the differences are obvious. The fake has a more horizontal tail; straighter lower back legs and is running across a bagette shaped grassy knoll. There is also a much narrower space between the T of West and the Y of Yorkshire. The metal is generally thinner, bendier and the title scroll attaches to lugs on the white metal horse section of the badge.

They may of course both be wrong. Your thoughts please.

Hi there,

I'm fairly sure both yours are genuine examples, this badge was worn for over 50 years and was made by many different manufactures so there are a load of variations.

I have attached a card of a number (not all) of my other ranks West Yorks cap badges and each is different, there are some cast examples at the bottom which from my logic are also genuine having being worn by the Regiment (bearing in mind their service in both the middle and far east).

Cheers,

Marcus

Thank you, but I think that if you could actually handle them both you would see that one is a nice solid badge whilst the other can be bent out of shape quite easily.

I agree with Marcus, both look fine, one is just better made than the other!

Andy

hi i agree with both andy and marcus i too have both versions of this badge and after seeing these badges at many fairs im pretty sure both are ok hope so because as i said i have both versions

Fascinating thread!

Are there any known fake/copies?

I too have a small selection, but assumed some of them must be bad 'uns.

Am struggling as to how many different badges can all be genuine?

Cheers,

Andy C

All the known Great War badges in my collection as well as the Victorian ones have a common factor in that the don't bend out of shape in the hand as they are made out of brass or white metal. Most modern copies are made out of thinner alloys and bend easily without much hand pressure. I am sure that the earlier badges would bend if you put one edge in a vice and whacked them with a lump of 2 by 4. However, I don't recommend this as a method of testing the authenticity of your badges.

The slider is another indicator of an original badge; it should not bend and the one on the second badge illustrated bends easily.

Thirdly, the second badge appears to be artificially aged.

The theory about badges or sliders not bending is a bit of an "Old Wives Tale" and as a seller, if someone started to tweak one of my badges he would get a short, sharp flea in the ear!!! :o

In general badges shoud be pretty sturdy, but do not for one minute dismiss a badge because it is on the flimsy side!

;) Andy

I would clearly only attempt to bend my own suspect badges :D Taking Uri Geller around militaria fairs to check the tensile strength of the merchandise would be both expensive and time consuming.

Leaving aside the old wives tails, we can state as fact that Victorian and Great War period cap badges are of a much sturdier construction than modern copies made on the Indian sub continent.

I have dug out some photographic evidence and it appears that the mound on the Great War period West Yorkshire Regiment badges is fuller and not bagette like. In the majority of cases the tail points downwards.

Other pictures are not so clearly defined photographically but seem to follow the trend.

As per my original post I'm not talking about purely WW1 era badges which you seem to be doing, so I wont comment further.

Good point and there's the rub. It is extremely difficult to attribute a cap badge whose design has renained unchanged between 1911 and 1953 to the Great War period without taking into account the quality of the materials and the standard of manufacturing.

I probably should have said that I was not happy with my original West Yorkshire cap badge being a Great War example.

In that case I agree with you.

Here's some early ones, three pre 1903 (lugged) and a "Lambourne" slidered example, probably c.WW1! They all vary quite a bit, but the lugged examples are all very detailed, sturdy and deeply struck! The W.Yorks to avoid IMO are those with an undulating wavy effect to the upper edge of the ground, which apart from OSD examples often indicates a repro?

Andy