landsknechte

Does anyone who specializes in Polizei and similar such organizations have any good links that they might be able to share that would help a casual "outsider" have some sort of clue what they might have stumbled across, when they find shoulderboards and the like that are outside of the standard Heer / Kriegsmarine / Luftwaffe? Thanks, --Chris

This particular photograph is a Third Reich era Schutzpolizei shoulder board: Were there any shouldboards put out later by East Germany that would have looked the same (at least superficially)? Thanks, --Chris

I don't think I even had that one long enough to have taken my own photograph of it.

This last one is unofficial, but I haven't been able to figure out if it's period unofficial, or modern unofficial.

...

...and now that we've gone TR:

...and another, now being tugged into the zincy world by its neighbor:

More Bavarian crown & swords devices:

Here's a different style of crown and swords device for the Bavarian MVK1XmKr:

Personally, I've only got one ribbon that I haven't a clue what it might be. The two Ricks will, I'm sure, grumble about my obsession for IDing this one. Anyhow, there are some that are ambiguious (i.e. those Friedrichsorden vs. peacetime PCO, etc.), but I'm thinking more along the lines of those utterly unknown ribbons that those of you might have lurking about in the drawer. Post whatever you've got, and perhaps there'll be someone in here that'll have the answer.

This is the only other thing that I've found attached to that particular ribbon:

This is the only thing from Waldeck that was ever in my collection, one of the very few items that I have ever sold. (To reunite it with a matching medal bar.)

If I were a hardcore medal collector, instead of just a ribbon bar junkie, I'd have a heck of an inferiority complex right about now.

It looks like the exact same cockade, on the exact same card that mine (and the others that were up for offer) was cut from.

Just stumbled across this listing on eBay.de:

Couldn't have said it better myself. That's one of those bars that rather fun to read the implied "life story" out on. So, you're saying he was a...

Another Saxon mini-EK device:

A different style of swords (note the s-hilt):

A rather well abused mini-EK device, and a crudely stamped silver crown and swords device.

A similar "bound" swords device, this time used on the Austrian Ehrenlegion decoration from the interwar period.

Bavarian MVK Crown and Swords

Now, this one is just plain funny:

The dark is probably black, maybe a very very dark forest green. I only grabbed one, but the seller had a whole box of them, most still on the cardboard backing in ones or twos. The butterscotch was evenly butterscotch on all of them, with a couple that were a hair more mustard yellow. Thanks, --Chris

Here's what little you can see of the reverse without pulling the cardboard off...

Randomly found this cockade this afternoon... Two questions - is it real, and if so, where would it be from?