Sold today for 25,000 euro!

[command450]

right off the shelf !!

Those have zero ambiance to them.....fountain of youth hats!

thanks for sharing ben !! your probably going to run the crooks outa town!!

[stonemint]

Good job, Ben, I had not looked at that site for a long time. Very few original hats (and those are the common ones).

A mix of Frankys, heavyweights, and ground-up repros. The faker seems to have a love affair with the Pekuro stirndruckfrei system.

Man, even this Kreis hat is a ground-up fake down to the insignia and RZM tag:

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Which goes to show that the cosmos of collecting reflects the real world, with the light and the dark, with the sweet and savory, and whatever. There are those who inform themselves and can defeat such tawdry things as this kind of pile of new foetid woolen headwear, or there are those who remain in their ignorance and are put in the bag by said fraudsters. It is all too droll. It has also become something of an unending story on these websites, and I think we have an obligation to add more knowledge and information as we find it. Rather, I actually think our well intentioned effort, such as it is, aids the fakers to improve their objects. I really wonder if someone actually paid such monies for these items at all. I have my serious doubts, in fact. This is a fun house hall of mirrors or a freak show, you choose your metaphor. In fact, one German recently told me (a person of some authority and in a position to know) that there is a shrinking number of his countrymen who can tell real Nazi stuff from the fakes, while, plainly, the market thrives and this material here emerges from a central European source. Why does not one of you go there and have it out with them and then we won't have to see these pictures anymore? You just saw that the Danish film producer got turfed out of Cannes for his stupid remarks about Schikelgruber, so maybe some upstanding soul will take umbrage to fake hats and the sweat shops will be closed down and proceeds provided to charities that aid development in the third world. They did so about the so called "Hitler Diaries" ca. 1983 with the editor of Stern, but that was a long time ago ( I lived in the FRG then, actually). Rather, I think this is all somewhat akin to the drug trade, as a matter of fact, or other forms of vice exploited by organized crime.

Thanks to Ben as ever for his constructive role on this website and do let us have more images of interesting, real material.

Our project is what is called in the trade "capacity building," i.e. enabling collectors to determine for themselves on the basis of more positive knowledge than photos of train wrecks, snake bite victims, and veneral disease in its advanced stages as is the norm on the maroon paranoia and superstition site.

In fact, the time has come to add a separate rubric for the crooked dealer and fake hat demimonde, that is, precisely where this kind of junk should be.

The good stuff should be kept in the center ring of the circus, and the freak show and collection of human monstrosities as well as flesh eating plants should go to the side lines.

Don't you think?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

PS. This comment, Ben, is not directed at you, but at others. You actually care about real material and how it can be recognized versus the cyber orgy of "...oh, it is all fake...." claptrap that is the dominant theme on the other site.

[BenVK]

For every One thread regarding an original item and the history behind it, there will always be 10 threads that concern fakes. It's the nature of our chosen hobby and collectors learn more from what is fake than they do from what is original. It's not my favourite pastime to bring all this and the rancid fraud out into the open but I do consider it a kind of duty, passed onto to me by friends whom I've never met in person but who have given up their time to educate without asking for anything in return. No one will have heard of these people these days, the hue and cry have driven them, for the most part, underground.

Most people in this hobby will have heard of the term "witchhunt". I can assure everyone that I'm not on a witchhunt or hunting any particular dealers for the greater good of us all. Sorry, I am no Robin Hood character, if you're silly enough to buy such regalia without consulting knowledgeable people first, you only have yourself to blame.

I do sometimes wonder how and why this particular hobby attracts so many people who think that they can navigate this area without tuition? It's quite astonishing and probably why there are so many sharks willing to snap your credit card clenching hand off.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

For every One thread regarding an original item and the history behind it, there will always be 10 threads that concern fakes. It's the nature of our chosen hobby and collectors learn more from what is fake than they do from what is original. It's not my favourite pastime to bring all this and the rancid fraud out into the open but I do consider it a kind of duty, passed onto to me by friends whom I've never met in person but who have given up their time to educate without asking for anything in return. No one will have heard of these people these days, the hue and cry have driven them, for the most part, underground.

Most people in this hobby will have heard of the term "witchhunt". I can assure everyone that I'm not on a witchhunt or hunting any particular dealers for the greater good of us all. Sorry, I am no Robin Hood character, if you're silly enough to buy such regalia without consulting knowledgeable people first, you only have yourself to blame.

I do sometimes wonder how and why this particular hobby attracts so many people who think that they can navigate this area without tuition? It's quite astonishing and probably why there are so many sharks willing to snap your credit card clenching hand off.

Your point is mine as concerns the one post of nice real things, and the ten posts of freak show junk. I actually think that the predominate fake threads dis enable people to determine things, at least these would me. However, I am stuck in the middle of the 20th century and have the luxury of actually looking at real things whenever I want, and to examine them in a way that no machine can provide from afar. My point is that the paranoia created by others (not by Ben...) cripples more than it enables. As a history teacher, I am all too aware of how difficult it is for people now to make sense of the past. The modern tendency is to feel first, and think later, and then to think in a pseudo science versus any real, analytical thought and analysis. And, in this, I have caught others on other sites making huge mistakes, which they never correct, and their dogmas and doctrines based on the revealing of fakes as the central activity likely only creates a deep and abiding confusion, which is exploited by various kinds of people. You, Ben, are not a witch hunter, but others surely are and I think we are obligated to point this fact out too along with the presumptive and putative traits of authentic versus fake caps. There are so many enormous historical errors in the received wisdom or pseudo knowledge that obtains to what is proffered on other sites that is is frankly pathetic. And because there is such a weak and shaky baseline of shared and agree knowledge that is historically durable (versus a check list) the whole thing is problematic. That is my general point, but it is much too subtle for this kind of exchange and too scholastic by half. So be it. Like Zarah Leander, says I: "....so bin ich, und so bleibe ich...."

PS Also note that I have no commercial interest in certain dealers, since I earn my living in education and not in the sale of foetid woolens. I am a collector and a professional historian, although that and .25 cents won't get you a cup of coffee in the 21st century, that is for certain.

PSS The worst errors as concern history and regalia, however, are perpetrated by dealers and or collectors of certain cap badges. They truly take the cake. Seldom in more than forty years of experience have I ever seen a bigger bunch of CuPal baloney than there.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

We should make up a quiz based on the Muetzenfabrik thread and charge an entry fee to those who want to blow such a heap of cash on such stuff. The conflicts of interest, however, are substantial and endemic to this odd time we live in.

[Bochmann]

This is a great thread.Some of the fakes shown are good or better than good, especially if one is just starting out and has never seen an actual original "in the flesh"
Sadly, I did like the political visor in post number 42 but it would not be the type of thing that I would buy (unless it was really cheap) but it is sad that what is a good hobby which is steeped in history has been hijacked by a great number of "snake oil salesmen" for purely financial gain.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

If you are interested in NSDAP material, look on the website of the Arizona author of Schiffer books on same, whose name escapes me...Jeff Clark? He illustrates many nice authentic examples.

[BenVK]

Luckily, there is a huge wealth of knowledge on this forum (I don't consider myself one of them) that can help and guide anyone who really wants to know, along the right path. It's not often that such knowledge is available for free so I would suggest that everyone makes the most of it whilst they can.