Gary B

WMC & Westwall

Luft LS

Luft LS & Czech

Heer LS

Czech and Spanish

Here are some of my medal bars. Gary B

Hi, Pete, I blame Paul! Paul, the $500 Oberst pair were for flight personnel. It was from one of the big German dealers. It was the only set of Oberst tabs I saw on all of the sites, which is why I was surprised. I know Oberst would be rarer than Leutnant but I did not expect to see such a huge difference in availability. The same site had perhaps 2-3 other Oberst sets for different waffenfarbe, again in the $400 plus range. Again I had assumed that flight Oberst or Flak Oberst would have been not so hard to find....boy was I wrong.... In summation of my "findings": its not that hard or expensive to get differnt waffenfarbe pairs up thru Hauptmann. Any ranks above that are really scare if not almost impossible to find. Gary B

Hi, I was fortunate enought to obtain my Officer flak and flight tab sets (paired) as a complete or mostly complete set. It was only until recently when I started to look for specific tabs in different waffenfarbes that I began to notice the availability, or I should say dearth of, and widely varying prices on tabs. So yesterday when I had some time I decided to look thru about 20 different sites to see what was available and how much dealers were asking. Dealers ranged from the big ones to small ones, both in the US and abroad. Here is a summary of what I found (very unscientific study...of only PAIRED tabs): Difficulty to locate (from easy to hard): Flak, Signal, Flight, Medical, Engineer (Admin was prevalant but for this "study" I did not actively count them but would probably be around the same as Signal). Waffenfarbes seen once or twice would be HG officers, Eng (black waffenfarbe), Field Divs, Gen staff and any reserve type tabs. Rank availability: As would be expected lower ranks were easier to locate, but I was really suprised to see the actual breakdown (this is for both Flak and Flight): Leutnant (29) Oberleutnant (11) Hauptmann (24) Major (7) Oberstleutnant (1) Oberst (1) Prices were widely varied with the German dealers tending to have the highest prices overall: Leutnant $40 - $102 Oberleutnant $45 - $75 Hauptmann $50 - $117 Major $60 - $125 Oberstleutnant $95 Oberst $500 Reserve Hauptmann $160 Reserve Oberleutnant $80 Reserve Leutnant $200 As I said before this was just based on observation and a rough count of what was available. Many sites did not have ant Luft tabs at all. Comments? Gary B

Paul, You make me laugh! Out of deference to you I will not buy a tab and pull it apart! Gary

I see Paul is trying to prevent me from buying an old tab and pulling it apart Gary B

Laurence, Those are some sweet reserve tabs. Gary B

Dear John, Thanks for the wonderful compilation of pictures. I will scratch discriminator that from my list! Gary B

Thanks Rick, I returned the piece in question. Look forward to the article. Gary B

Hey, Thanks for the comments! Bob, I wish I had been a little quicker on that double RAD ribbon bar that Rick had for sale...I believe you got that...correct? I wont tell either of you what I paid for these 2 items...I got them when I was a kid years ago in a junk box. Gary

I have posted these in another forum before but thought some might like to see it here....esp Mr. Rick! Gary B

Rick, Ref WWII ribbon bars...I did not know that...thanks. But what about snipped brass catches on WWII TR medal bars? I know that on a ribbon bar that is the sign of a Ohio fraud makers bar. Gary B

Paul, Great buy! As time permits you wil have to post some close ups of the highest level of the admin tabs. I don't think I have ever seen them before. As an aside, I attended the National Guun show today. Mostly guns but there were a few dealers thare with TR items. One delaer had some repro Luft Gen Officer tabs for sael. I tell you if he had not told me they were fake I would not have known. He said they were made in Europe, possibly from the same people who made the originals....scary. Gary B

Laurence, The Musician tab looks ok to me. I have seen tabs where a gull was added in between 2 other gulls for a promotion, so this to me is not a bad indicator. As a matter of fact I think it is a good indicator that the tab is real. Paul, the tab looks like a Signal musician. Laurence? Gary B

Agreed Rick, but you will also note that the dvices are in the incorrect order as well, so it appears that the bar was made this way. What think ye? Gary B

Dear Don, Nice medal bar. Thanks for posting. Gary B

Dear Laurence and Paul, I think this was a good thread and although we dont have a definitive answer, I do like what we discussed. Perhaps one day I should buy a crappy tab and take it apart just to see if I can get any more insight to manufacturing techniques (kinda like the evil twins have done for ribbon bars). Thanks again. Gary B

Thanks, Laurence. So do you believe all of the Luft tabs were made using one of these templates? I am trying to figure out why there is such a wide variety of positioning of gulls/wreaths and details even when a pair is a "matched set". It almost appears that sometimes they did not use a template but freelanced it. Opinion? Gary B

Hi guys, Thanks for the comments. I will try to get around to posting the reserve tabs when I get them out of the safe again. Gary B

Paul, When I was stationed in Korea, there were shops downtown that emboidered flags for soldiers. They were sewn by people who operated a special sewing machine. Pressure on a foot pedal operated the up and down of the needle. The more pressure the faster the needle moved (just like a regular sewing machine) . Additionally, there was a bar near their knee which controlled the side to side movement of the needle. Greater pressure would increase the width of the needle arc, less pressure created a narrow arc. The Koreans operated these machines making hundreds of these framed Regimental flags for people. All were done by hand (without the assitance of a diagram on the cloth). I have always wondered if tabs were sewn using the same method. By hand sewn do you mean with a persons hand and no machine assistance? Possible but given the number of tabs that would have had to have been made that would have been a serious undertaking. Were tabs made the same was as other TR patches? if so how were they made, was there a template that a machine could follow to mass produce them? Hand sewing would account for the great number of variations encountered even among matched pairs. Puzzled, Gary B

Hi, Ok this might seem like a silly question but how were tabs made/sewn? I dont think they were hand sewn...were they sewn by a machine that was run by an individual? Was there a machine that automatically sewed them? Any help? Gary B