[kaiserwilhelm2]

Luke,

I am sorry to see that you seem intent to paint this whole thing in dark colours for whatever reason. I like so many people am trying to get some help on a Forum to seperate good from bad items as is done on fora all over the world. This is quite a normal thing and I on other fora have helped out a lot of collectors with their queries if this was in a field in which I am at home.

What I grant you is the extra-ordinary number of badges I have asked an opinion on. Considering there are several fakes among these, not a strange thing to ask. If this has ruffled your feathers than I am sorry about that - as I stated above. I have absolutely no interest in drawing this out and only gave some context on the deal behind these badges as others were asking me about it, and keep asking me about it. No more no less.

What I do not understand is how you so easily dismiss the fact that I am dependent on a dealer to reimburse me for my fake items and that bleating his name all over the internet is not in my best interest. I am pretty sure that most people who have a couple of thousand pounds at stake (for over 200 badges) prefer to tread carefully seeing as their money is at stake. Looking at it from this perspective I would expect a little bit of understanding for the situation I am in.

As for helping other people I am happy to help others but in this case I am the one who needs help and there is little I can do to help when I need others to tell me if something is good or bad. Although someone here on the forum approached me on a particular badge that he was still missing and that was among the ones I had and asked me if I would mind selling it to him. I responded that I would be willing to help him out by trading this badge with him after this whole vetting thing was over so he could complete his variant collection. Happy to help out where I can to no benefit to myself. I would have done the same for you since you expressed an interest in one of my badges.

Seriously I have done nothing other than buy a batch of badges at what I thought was a trustworthy dealer and asking opinions on these on the forum. THAT IS ALL. Luke, why this is an issue for you or why this is becoming unfriendly I have no idea. All I know is this is making me sad and what I was hoping to be a possitive collecting experience in a new area of collecting for me is turning into the opposite.

Tom