Endless Supply?

[Dwayne H]

Ive seen this auction on ebay consistently over the last little while. While not an excessively rare badge, it certainly isn't one normally found in junk boxes at shows so I have to wonder where the seller got all of them. I haven't seen one up close so I can't pass judgement but I would be a bit suspicious..

http://cgi.ebay.com/The-North-Shore-...QQcmdZViewItem

[Pylon1357]

Interesting, I can not really see this badge being faked. They are quite common. I noted the seller lists his location as Bedford N.S. Seems Bedford does ring a Second World War bell with me.

[cyrus]

A couple of months ago I contacted this seller re. some HLI capbadges he was selling. I asked him if he had a lot of them because each time one sold he put another up on auction. He didn't say where he got them but he had 'a few' of them left... Just take a look at his feedback to see in which quantities the same badges get sold over and over again. Maybe it has something to do with this : http://www.britishbadgeforum.com/for...ead.php?t=2526? The list posted on this thread isn't complete I think ?

[John Cameron]

Back in the 1970s we called them "Migory Badges" after the dealer that was selling them. Evidently he bought them by the pound from the military. He was selling dealer lots of 100 or 1000 badges at literally pennies apiece. There were pretty much all the Second War and postwar corps, except the RCAVC and ChC; and most of the common infantry and armoured units. The HLI and the North Shore were among them as well as the Black Watch, L&R Scots, Lorne Scots, Calg H, CHofO and QOCHofC. A dealer friend of mine picked up a huge lot and had them for sale for a few dollars each. Didn't sell well so he quadrupled the price on a lot of them and sold a few hundred dollars worth in a week.
They were all original, never issued, many had a great deal of tarnish or discolouration migrating from the location where the lugs were soldered on.
Many collectors from that period started their collections with these badges.

[Wyn vdSchee]

Here is what I posted about the endless supply some months ago:

Bags of Canadian Badges
The story can, at least in part, be let out after 39 years, although names will not be mentioned. I was in Toronto in mid-1969 attending a Canadian Forces Staff School course. As I was based in Calgary, I could not go home on week-ends like my colleagues from Ontario and Quebec, so I hung around a shop on Queen Street East that sold militaria. One Friday afternoon the owner asked if was interested in going to Cobourg, east of Toronto, to look at a pile of badges. Cobourg was the site of a large Ordnance depot for central Canada, and held stocks of clothing and accoutrements.
Working at the depot was a corporal who was also a badge collector - talk about giving the fox a key to the hen house. Off we went to Cobourg to visit him. He had learned that all stocks of King's Crown Canadian Army badges had been sold for scrap. He contacted the scrap dealer and made the appropriate financial and transportation arrangements to have the badges delivered to his house. They were contained in cardboard barrels about three feet high and 18 inches in diameter, and there literally scores of barrels in rows on his basement floor. Thus were Second World War and post-war King's Crown badges saved for posterity. The lot included badges of regiments that were disbanded in the 1964-5 militia reorganization such as the 19th Alberta Dragoons and 4th Princess Louise Dragoon Guards, and also a barrel each of Queen's Crown badges of the The Halifax Rifles and Victoria Rifles of Canada.
Michael Reintjes is correct in saying that they are genuine, unissued badges. Some became partially discoloured during manufacture or storage, but the expectation was they would acquire greater lustre in the hands of the keen soldiers to whom they would eventually be issued.
To return to the tale, the Toronto dealer did not buy them but other dealers did and the market suddenly saw a surfeit of KC badges. The corporal was nearing retirement and wanted to buy a car wash to supplement his pension; I think he achieved his aim. Who ever bought the Queen's Crown Halifax Rifles and Victoria Rifles badges is letting them out a few at a time and realizing a good price for them, if there are indeed any left.