EK 1939 925 English marked 1957 RK,s Oaks etc.

[Grant Broadhurst]

Hello All ,

I,m trying to get to the bottom of why some 1957 RK,s , Oaks/Swords are marked 925 English Sterling .

I have read they were made in England in the 1990,s .

I have also been told that they were made under contract for S & L and then sold as collectors copies .

Can anyone add anything to this ?

[Laurence Strong]

I have been kinda scratching my head over that one also lately.

[Stogieman]

Interesting as the usual German markings would be:

"Silber"

"800"

"938"

[Grant Broadhurst]

Come on Gordon put us out of our misery !!

[Gordon Williamson]

Over a period of around 30 years from the early 70s, I have bought dozens of S&L 57 RKs, Oaks, etc, through various sources, from Uniform Outfitters, German dealers, BW Kleiderkasse, direct from S&L. Every single item, if silver, was 800 stamped, including those I got direct from S&L as late as the early 1990s.

How the 925 pieces came about (and they only seem to have appeared in very recent years) is open to argument. I'm not convinced they were made by Steinhauer. Supplied by Steinhauer maybe, but did they actually make them ???. Even in the days when they were more willing to supply 57 pieces, they weren't interested enough to offer a supply available from stock. You had to wait until they had enough orders to make the production of a small batch worthwhile. The manufacture of '57 awards today is, I would suggest, not an important, economic, part of S&Ls business.

It has been suggested that they eventually subcontracted production of their 57 stuff. Maybe. Certainly I have seen 57 pieces which had all the usual S&L '57 fittings and were supplied by them,but were cast (slightly smaller as you'd expect from castings), not die struck. Why cast them when they had the original tools to strike them ? Unless they didn't actually make them - couldn't be bothered - so subcontracted out the work to someone else who could make them cheaper as castings, then simply add their mark up.

Either way, I see the 925s as a modern "made for the collector market" phenomenon and would very much doubt any of them are more than a few years old. Those you usually see have that very modern circular dished out reverse with flat outer edge rather than the whole reverse being gently concaved as on early pieces.

(There is of course nothing intrinsically wrong with a 925 stamp on a German piece, there are many 1914 EKs that are 925 stamped).