Id tag

[Noodledoodle]

The bottom one so I'm told was picked up in the 60, s

[Matt L]

Oh wow- good work Noodledoodle

Man, they're all the same- it certainly doesn't appear to be the case of some guy just stamping 'SS' on an old Heer disc; they all look as though they were made all at once, which strongly suggests they're fakes.

All three are 'original' members of the unit- the first recruits after IEB90 was created in 11. 1940, and, amusingly, all blood group A; that's not wrong or anything, O and A are the most common types in western Europe, being about 40% of the population each. The blood group 'A' is always below the 'L' in 'BTL.' and the Sigrunen are all below the 'NP.' of 'INP. Very suspicious. And the Sigrunen don't look any different than the rest of the marks, suggesting they were put on at the same time as the rest of the marking was done- and that can only mean the whole things are fake.

I have a really, really hard time believing three discs from the 1. Kompanie, one surviving the whole war (with its cord), and two dug up, presumably at different times if one is claimed to be from the 60s, could suddenly all come along and be displayed/ offered for sale. I don't know the actual strength of a 1941/41 IEB Kompanie, but a proper combat Kompanie was less than 250 men, so if there were even only 250 discs from this first batch of recruits, it's beyond unlikely 3 would be known, let alone the way I just mentioned. AND have some faker add the Sigrunen and somehow make them look exactly like the rest of the marks, AND be able to 'age' the pieces so they are uniform and look fairly convincing.

Might as well buy a lottery ticket- the odds are probably better LOL

The sucky thing about all this is that if he hadn't gotten greedy and added the Sigrunen, the discs would have been convincing. Not having ever seen an authentic 1./IEB90 disc so not being able to say these look different (which I'd expect they do) I don't see anything else that'd make me think they're fakes- apart from it being extremely unlikely 3 would show up like that.

[Noodledoodle]

Praise from Caesar , thank you , the one with the cord I would say its suss but the other 2 then I'm not sure, they look like they could be real , no marks from recent stamping and all that plus the dirt and grime is in the stamp grooves , also not seen anymore like that , which in this climate, people or collectors buy ss stuff by the bucket load , so would expect more like this, maybe more research is needed in this field

[Noodledoodle]

The Jnp is unusual too, but if I've researched correctly , Id tags were made by the company werkstatte so that would bring the conformity question to a end , but adding ss stamps well that would be against very strict regulations but not unknown to happen

[Noodledoodle]

Also the company no,s are different , which means nothing in itself but blood group A could very well come up 3 times, I suppose if you had a bucket with 250 or 300 tags with half A and half O and threw them on the floor you would get 3 blood groups the same, I suppose the only way really to verify all this would be to check the records in Berlin and maybe see who these no,s belonged too

[Matt L]

Oh there's no issue with the JNP mark being consistent- clearly if the stamp set used to make the discs missing its F, then they should all be the same- being so close in their roll numbers. I've seen many examples of substitutions like that- they're not super rare, just uncommon. And yes, A and O blood groups together account for 70-80% of the population, but it's just that together with all the other issues it's just one more dubious coincidence that they're all A. It's not a case of finding 3 in 300, it's finding 3 of 3. It's mainly the condition that suggests the discs are complete fakes- one clean(ish) and three 'dug', all consistent, and all from the same recruit 'class' of the same Kompanie, all having a misplaced SS stamp? I don't think so LOL

And no, the addition of an SS mark isn't 'not unknown to happen'- it didn't happen. There's no reason for it to; a Heer unit wouldn't have an SS stamp in the first place. There were only 6 actual SS-Infanterie-Ersatz-Bataillone, and so far as I've found they all had names, not numbers: 'LSSAH', 'Deutschland', 'DF', 'Westland', 'Germania', and 'Ost'. That's it. There was no 90. If a Heer soldier transferred to the SS, they wouldn't just add 'SS' to his disc either since the whole point of the marking is to know where to find the man's record; that's why men generally kept the same disc they were issued with when they started- because that's where the main record was. It didn't matter which field unit(s) he eventually served in.

[Noodledoodle]

Like I say , it needs to be researched who these men were and what happened to them, if they perished then where and if they lived well.........., fakes they may be but if I was gonna fake something I'd choose a better set of numbers and not something obscure, but hey............

[Noodledoodle]

As a aside a group I'm a member of posted some digs they did in Eastern Europe not long ago and on one of the digs they came across a site where in 45 a unit surrendered, in the area a horde of dog tags where found and in another helmets and in another weapons and finally in a small area bones , the tags where the same apart from the individual member number

[Noodledoodle]

And some ss tags too

[Matt L]

You might have chosen a better set of numbers or a real unit Doodle, but fakers are often quite dumb- that's an easy way we can catch them out: if they make up units completely or otherwise screw up markings like this. Never overestimate them LOL

In this case just sticking the SS on there is a sizable mistake- a very obvious one too; and if, as it appears, the entire things are fake, he's even dumber because he was trying to be clever- substituting the P for an F, and using a different font for the blood group are both things we discuss as features of real discs- but then he mixes conditions (one nice and two dug), doesn't vary the blood group at all, and chooses a regular Heer unit to try and 'SS-ify', when a very basic search or a little knowledge exposes the error.

Unfortunately, it's not possible to research the soldiers who really had the roll numbers on these discs- only family can obtain service records. It really doesn't make any difference though since it's an academic argument whether or not the entire discs are fake or they're real and just ruined because of the added SS mark. The addition would ruin the already minimal value of a simple IEB disc- at least nobody I've ever known would pay anything for one. LOL

It must be way cool to get to dig relics up, and especially find dump hoards of discs. I've heard of a many finds of identical discs- most are just unit stock and unissued, but in rare cases they're very late war groups of recruits all sent to the front together and end up surrendering together. Were there blood group marks on the ones you found? That would prove they were issued- no mark doesn't prove they weren't, but depending on what the unit mark is, they could-well just be the unissued replacement stock units carried.