Soviet Breast badges for excellence

[TacHel]

I recently acquired 2 such badges for excellence but must admit at not knowing how to tell the difference between a genuine article and a copy.

I included "rather large" pictures of both to help you in telling me whether these are genuine articles or copies. I paid very little for them so if they turn out to be copies, no big deal. I would however greatly appreciate input on what to look for in future dealings regardless of the outcome.

[TacHel]

Reverse of the same badge.

[TacHel]

[TacHel]

Reverse of same badge.

[kimj]

I'm afraid both are no good. There are some excellent copies of these badges around so it can be hard to tell what is good and what is bad. Your badges are from one of the first generations of fakes, at least that is what I think. Notice the colour of the reverse, almost brown, this is one of the give-aways. Another thing is the screw post(is that the correct word?) one has a fatter end attached to the badge. Common in this type of fakes. The other screw post is too thin and copper? I've never seen a real one with this type.

Usually this type of fakes are more flat than the real deal.

The pontoneer badge almost looks identical to one of my first badges. I got that one in St Petersburg on a trip. Later I found out that is was bad...

/Kim

[Alfred]

Look bad to me.

best regards

Andreas

[TacHel]

Thanks gents, no sweat, like I said, I paid very little for them.

Would it be possible to see pics of genuine badges with tips on what to look for? Like they say, a picture is worth 1000 words. I'm thinking of acquiring the entire set of these badges in the near future and am going in blind... And since I've seen some of them (wartime items) going for hundreds of dollars, I won't spend a cent until I learn more.

[Ferdinand]

If you seriously want to dive into this area, I would recommend trying to acquire the book "Нагрудные знаки Красной Армии (1941-1945)" (Breast badges of the Red Army, 1941-1945) by B.V. Airapetyan. It is written in Russian, but covers all the wartime Soviet badges, including all variations and rarity ratings. It's not an expensive book, I bought my copy in St. Petersburg for around 20 USD.

[kimj]

Here's the ancient thread about these badges.

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=1720&hl=sniper rkka&st=0

/Kim

[TacHel]

Here's the ancient thread about these badges.

http://gmic.co.uk/in...=1720&hl=sniper rkka&st=0

/Kim

Thanks for the link, a good start!:cheers:

[kimj]

Thanks for the link, a good start!

No problem! There used to be very good Russian site specialized on these. But now it seems to have vanished, the guy called himself sniperRKKA.

/Kim