Kriegsmarine Rarest Cap Tally?

[Chris Boonzaier]

I tend to think this is among them.

I spent about 10 years looking for one as my Wifes grandfather was on the ship at Narvik... Some of the dealers told me it never existed... finally I saw gordon had one for sale, in a nice used condition, perfect for me....

[Gordon Williamson]

Apart from the genuinely non-existent ones (Bismarck, Tirpitz, Graf Zeppelin etc which only exist as modern fantasy pieces) over the years I have had the ribbons for virtually every named surface warship from Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (the biggest ships for which ribbons exist) down to the little Torpedoboote like the M?we etc. SOme are hrader to find than others (Gneisenau much harder to get than Scharnhorst for example) but most turn up eventually.

For me the hardest to find were Unterseebootsflotille Emsmann, some of the Unterseebootstender of which I have three or four still to find and the U-Bootsbegleitschiffe, of which I only have "Saar" so far.

[David Gregory]

Apart from the genuinely non-existent ones (Bismarck, Tirpitz, Graf Zeppelin etc which only exist as modern fantasy pieces) over the years I have had the ribbons for virtually every named surface warship from Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (the biggest ships for which ribbons exist) down to the little Torpedoboote like the M?we etc. SOme are hrader to find than others (Gneisenau much harder to get than Scharnhorst for example) but most turn up eventually.

For me the hardest to find were Unterseebootsflotille Emsmann, some of the Unterseebootstender of which I have three or four still to find and the U-Bootsbegleitschiffe, of which I only have "Saar" so far.

Gordon,

How do you display cap tallies or are they stored in the dark?

David

[Gordon Williamson]

David,

Not in the dark, but out of direct sunlight. I keep them in quite cheap Ikea frames with the glass removed.(having seen some really fragile old framed imperial ribbons where the silk has stuck to the glass) The ribbons are held at the back by low-tack tape, so as not to leave any marks on them. Can be tricky keeping them tensioned and I usually have to re-do everything every few months as they start to droop. As the ribbons get progressively older through Bundesmarine, Kriegsmarine, Kaiserliche Marine they get more fragile and have to be carefully handled so you don't want to risk keeping them too taught and risking them splitting.

[David Gregory]

Gordon,

A wonderful display and thanks for the tips.

Now I have to work out which tallies I need to match the documents I have and then find the tallies themselves.

Are there any known fakes of Kaiserliche Marine tallies and can you recommend any good sources?

TIA

David

[KM-SPAIN]

Gordon, nice displays.

With time you can find more or less all, but some of them are really rare to find. I have been looking for the "Flottentender Gazelle" for many years, but till now nothing.