[Arnhem Jim]

Given it's a quiet Sunday afternoon, other than being St. Patrick's Day, I was musing over a subject that seems to raise its ugly head periodically. Certainly by design in this thread.

That being the motivating factors in the creation of fraudulent military insignia.
• Obviously ranking number one is pure greed, with the prerequisite being an identified market.
• Secondly is the fact that there are only a limited number of certain genuine articles known remaining in existence.
• The requirement of reenactment groups representing all eras of history to recreate accurate uniforms, with the correct insignia.
• The requirements of theatrical and motion picture production needs.
• Requirement generated by museums as well as individuals, to have fillers/replicas of the real thing, in order to show people a representation of what something looked like in three dimensions.
Fascination and challenge seen by some individuals just to see whether they have the requisite knowledge, technical and artistic skills/ability to totally fool experts, as well as current forensic technology.

Consider however, Fake militaria is playing in the "bush leagues" compared to the field of other fraudulent antiques, i.e. furniture, art, porcelain/ceramics, for example. Unfortunately the psychology of human nature creates a ready Petri dish for frauds and counterfeiters. While bringing shame and ridicule thru exposure may be a transient solution, it's only successful litigation (almost prohibitively expensive and time consuming) which provides an effective deterrent.

Arnhem Jim aka Arnhemjim

Not exactly a new member (with 399 posts), but somehow the name got changed from Arnhemjim to Arnhem Jim, and I'm not sure how to correct it.