Quote:
Originally Posted by Force136
I have been going through this thread with interest as it is exactly what collectors need to discern, or at least to be safe, in acquiring original examples as well as to catalogue suspected reproductions.
I have tried my best to scour British archives for documents on British badge production during WWII in order to track down some mysterious Canadian private purchase badges.
I know you guys have probably factored all this in but you also need to be very careful regarding the process of badge manufacture. In studying the Canadian-made brass Canadian Parachute Corps cap badges it is evident that despite a badge only existing for a very short time, multiple dies existed. Dies were owned and controlled by the government. However, this did not prevent the various companies contracted from making their own under different circumstances. Sometimes, if a die was damaged, they would be asked by the government to make a new one.
Considering the huge difference in numbers required between an Airborne School / Battalion and a multi-Battalion Regiment over a much longer period with the huge plethora of government contracted badge makers ( as well as the possibility of private manufacturers ) the numbers of die variants of the British Parachute Regiment badge can be daunting to figure out.
One question I always had, for example, regarding suspected reproduction badges we know originated as private purchases, is why would someone go to all the trouble and expense to create a completely new die when one could simply create a die from an original? Or, at that time, simply get the company to make a new batch from the original dies. A case in point is the 1st Canadian Armd Carrier Regt. and its distinct wartime die and a totally new die to produce the repro.
This has always had me wonder if there were not more than one die made during the war and the other "repro" badges simply did not get to the unit which was, like the Parachute Battalion, quickly demobbed and sent home.
I am wondering if this possible scenario might also apply to certain British badges. I am not saying this IS what happened, just have not been able to disprove the possibility. My point is, there may have been variants in the pipeline at the end of the war that did not make it to the unit. Also, firms that took it upon themselves to make their own private purchase badges may have sold dies off at the end of the war or made OR's badges using dies they may have originally used for officers' badges.
Anyway just a thought.
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Very interesting thought. I'm arriving kind of the same conclusion with other commando badges I have study. The only way to know would be to find manufacturers' archives or people who had inside information on that process. Has anyone try to contact the big manufacturers from that time ?
Soldiers must have had no clue about that as they must have been focused on training or war. Maybe officers or people in charge of batch ordering (if it was the officers who were doing that).
01-10-22, 03:36 PM
Unusual variant of the Para Regiment badge?
Linear Mode
