Mercian,
I am in total agreement, when numbers of similar, relatively uncommon,badges suddenly start appearing for sale it is time to be suspicious.
This is one source of a lot of ( to be polite , shall we say ) non original badges:
http://www.arbeia.demon.co.uk/srs/co...ry/desc_b.htm#
Perhaps we ought to be monitoring sites like this to see what their latest offerings are and what we might see suddenly appearing in numbers on auction sites.
Regards
Peter