Dog Tag - Authentic?

[GhostOfMachinery]

Hello! I would really appreciate some help regarding the authenticity of the german dog tag pictured below. It was supposedly recovered in Ukraine.



Thank you!

[Stacez]

Hello,
It looks fine and in my opinion is authentic. It belonged to:
Stamm-Kompanie/Grenadier-Ersatz-Bataillon 18
Infanterie-Ersatz-Bataillon 18 - Lexikon der Wehrmacht

[Matt L]

Yup, I agree- looks to be a perfectly standard Grenadier disc.

[Glenn66]

The different font size between the 'Stamm' and the rest of the tag is of no concern?

[Matt L]

No, in fact different fonts is usually a good thing- fakes more often have fewer as fakers have limited stamps for use, so they sometimes even use the same set for the unit text and the blood group, for example, which is virtually never seen (if ever). Perhaps surprisingly, there doesn't seem to have been a large-scale letter stamp manufacturer in Germany as I've actually never seen identical lettering on two different unit discs; they're always at least slightly different. This is the easiest way to recognize fakes since fakers use the same stamps for everything, when you recognize one letter type as being on a fake (from other mistakes), you can immediately detect others if they have those letters. The only stamps I've seen that can be consistent on real Erkennungsmarken are blood group letters- there was an issue type, although it wasn't a universal thing as only a limited percentage of discs has them, the rest just being the usual assortment.

In this case the unit text appears to be one dedicated stamp- thus the Kompanie was just put in later as appropriate and thus the lettering should be different. Because the Kompanie is the variable part, one may often see it as different from the rest- it's efficient to have one major source mark the unit with a space left for the Kompanie, and then later as necessary mark the 'blanks' with the correct number (or 'Stamm. Kp.') upon issue.

[Glenn66]

Thanks Matt, again so much new information to absorb!