EK 1939 Which RK maker

[Chris Boonzaier]

Its a bad pic... but can anyone guess?

[Dietrich]

Chris,

to say something definitive I would need better pictures.

Dietrich

[Chris Boonzaier]

Hi,

I will see if I can find any, I traded it in and out again in tha late 90s, am not sure if I have any more photos.

Best

Chris

[Chris Boonzaier]

An interesting note to the "Good old days"....

I bought this cross "800" in about (approx) 1996, from Willi Waldvogel. It was sold with a VB in Zweitschrift for his KC. Misera later got oakleaves and a Golden CCbt clasp.

a number of that periods "bigger collectors" had this in their hands at shows and all commented that the cross was good, the loop was not. Easily explained then as the Oakleaves had been removed, and ring was replaced at a later date.

A couple of years later I traded and sold it to the late K.P. Gündert who was considered an expert in RKs, he puzzled over the piece, his conclusion was, definately original, because of the quality. Geissler had been used, no match found, but we all remember the days where "in this quality, it must be real". The cross was NOT a S+L 800.

A couple of years later I asked Gündert if I could buy it back, but he had already traded/sold it.

Some time after that I saw a letter for sale with a Misera signature (he had written to a collector), in it he said his awards went missing in 45... either fact, or simply to get collectors off his back.

So a mystery KC, that in retrospect I am glad I was not able to buy back.

I have only ever seen one other, which was denazified. Here is the B3gger.... there was a small feature on the teeth that I had pinpointed, which was ecaxctly the same as the denazified one... but I cannot remember what it was :-(

Anyway, it is not a cross i would buy today, at best it is a grey area "unknown", at worst an extremely good fake. I was sure I had posted it on WAF, way back when, but stuff before 2001 seems to be archived somewhere, so I cannot say for sure.

I will keep looking for some better pics....

[Dietrich]

Chris,

what you have there is something that happened quite often: the adding of a cross to a group where it was missing. The main type to be found in this case are the post war B-Types from S&L with the typical die flaws of that type (which are not present on the war time A-Type). The company of S&L produced all kinds of models for that market and they were sold and bought with all kinds of COAs up until 2006/2007.

Today the topic of the RK is covered with an extremely high level of confidence and buying a fake is really more like a self-inflicted wound. Same applies to the oaks and swords, Diamonds are rarely on the market but are also well documented.

The very, very few grey items are more for esoteric discussions and should not influence the average collector. Why take the risk in an unproven RK if one can buy an S&L A-Type or an Juncker nearly every day? Why go for a possible S&L set of oaks for high money? Or an L/12 marked one?

The questions right now are in regards to defining the time lines even more accurate and assembling data about the rarity of the pieces. One cannot put the extreme rare crosses like the 3/4 Ring, the L/52 or the extreme rare Godet on the same level as the mass produced L/12 and S&L A-Types.

Dietrich

[Chris Boonzaier]

Chris,

what you have there is something that happened quite often: the adding of a cross to a group where it was missing.

Indeed, on a smaller lever, a marriage of a document and the award, missing everything else is always to be regarded with a healthy suspicion. I have only ever had 2 RKs, each had 1 or 2 documents.... this one the RK VB, the other an EK2 and wound (I think it was those two), but I was never really 100% sure on either that all really belonged together.

When i get an Imperial EK2 and doc on Ebay I usually just toss the EK2 into s drawer, most of the time there is no way on earth they belong together.

Best

Chris