Kriegsmarine KM Rating Insignia

[2dresq]

Greetings,

I don't believe that this topic has ever been discussed. I have read some of the reference books on the insignia and am aware of the general design and pattern.

My question is regarding how to tell if the rating badge is authentic Kriegsmarine or if it is a Bundesmarine patch.

Is there something I am missing. I see that these patches are relatively inexpensive and so I am wondering if there are any forgeries or post war loss of quality to be noted.

Please help answer my question. All of my current ones, I have purchased, have been from German Dealers and I believe them to be good, that being said, there are quite a few offered on ebay for a much better bargain.

Please help this collector.

Regards,

2dresq

Justin G.

[Gordon Williamson]

The examples on your photo all look to be original pieces.

No problem in confusing Kriegsmarine with Bundesmarine as the Bundesmarine did not use this style of combined rank/trade insignia so this type will be either genuine KM or fake KM.

There are lots of good original examples available on EBay for very low prices simply because they were made in huge numbers and, lacking any specific Nazi imagery (such as eagles, swastikas etc) they are of no interest to a great proportion of the collecting community and thus fetch pretty low prices.

Doesn't mean that no fakes have been made, they may well have been, but the financial return for making fakes of these badges which even in todays world of grossly inflated militaria prices, still only fetch a handful of Euros, means it really isn't worth it for the fakers.

You seem to have some nice original pieces for comparison. If any you are considering purchasing match the quality and consytruction of these, you should be pretty safe to buy.

If you go to some of the sites where they sell re-enactor insignia, you will find just about any Luftwaffe/Arrmy/Waffen-SS insignia you can imagine including all the cloth sleeve patches. I would have though that if someone was churning out fakes of the KM insignia too, that these would all be widely available, yet that isn't the case.

Like I said, it is possible that fakes exist, but KM cloth sleeve patches is still one of the safest collecting areas around. You can easily build up a huge collection of original stuff for a very low outlay.

[Laurence Strong]

How about with East German insignia Gordon?

[Gordon Williamson]

How about with East German insignia Gordon?

There were some similarities, but generally speaking if you have a KM type sleeve patch on blue wool backing then it is almost certainly NOT BM or Volksmarine

[leigh kitchen]

How about with East German insignia Gordon?

Yes, I've some of the small round KM on white backing, rather flimsy compared to the one or two examples that I already had, I've always been a little suspicious of those......

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=1726...0&start=100