Lettische and totenkopf dog tags

[Triggerself]

Hi guys, what do you think of this SS dog tag? This is original or not? I would appreciate any info on the unit.
Thank you.
Sergey

1.


2.


3.


4.

[bigmacglenn]

#2 and #3 do not appear original to me,...hopefully there will be other opinions....
cheers, Glenn

[Triggerself]

#2 and #3 do not appear original to me,...hopefully there will be other opinions....
cheers, Glenn

Why do you think so?

[bigmacglenn]

On #1 the lettering is stamped outwards instead of inwards, as the others are....#3 has markings that I've never encountered before and don't make much sense to me...Just my opinion, friend...
cheers, Glenn

[Triggerself]

On #1 the lettering is stamped outwards instead of inwards, as the others are....#3 has markings that I've never encountered before and don't make much sense to me...Just my opinion, friend...
cheers, Glenn

Thank you for your opinion.

I know that the 14. SS Totenkopf Infanterie Regiment is the only known unit that printed their dogtags from backside.
A big haul of this tags was found near "Heidelager" in east Poland in year 1997.

[bigmacglenn]

I have never heard of a 14th SS Totenkopf Infanterie Regiment...Quite sure it's a fake tag.
Any reference about this unit that supposedly stamped every one of their tags outwards? Never heard of that either...
cheers, Glenn

[Matt L]

The TJR is considered to be real actually- they're very well-known discs, and very unique in their style. It's a little odd because it was initially SS-Totenkopf-Standarte 14, and they became SS-Infanterie-Regiment 14 (mot.) in 2. 1941, but somewhere between there seemingly was a designation of 14. TJR. OR it was thought that's what it would be, so discs were made, and it wasn't so they were ditched en masse- which would explain the cache of low-numbered, seemingly unworn discs.

Embossed discs marked 'SS-Inf. Rgt. 14 (mot.)' exist that have the same number style for the roll numbers as those on the 14 SS-TJR discs, so it would seem the same tooling was used later as well. I've also seen discs marked 8 SS-Totenkopf-Inf. Rgt. and according to the regular lists there was only ever an SS-Totenkopf-Standarte 8, so it seems there was a similar situation- although the two of those I've seen did have blood group letters on so were issued.

I'm suspicious of all the Latvian ones though- note how the shape of the '2' is the same on all of them and that's a commonly seen type of 2 on fakes. A 15. Kompanie is extremely rare and although, unfortuntately, the listing I have for SS-Freiwilligen-Regiment 1 (lett.) only mentions it had 3 Bataillone and not if there was a 13., 14., or 15. attached as well. Nearly all Regimenter had only a 14. (Panzerjäger), and only a handful had the 15. Pionier Kompanie. That makes me wary too. On the plus side the main unit text appears to be one single stamp- BUT it's crude (look at the 'g', for example), like all the stamps on that disc (look at the '1'), so it's not much of a plus to me. The Vet. Kp. one isn't any better- it has the roll number beside the bottom hole and between the top holes, which is very commonly-seen on fakes but that I've never seen on an original (not sure why fakers like this layout so much) save one single example with a LOT of text that left no room for the number to be anywhere other than between the top holes.

Here are a couple of composites of the discs in question with the extremely similar '2's from known fakes on the Vet disc, and it turns out the other two are very similar so I've used those on each other (they're also very close to the fake type):




None is exactly identical, but they're so close as to be extremely suspect. The rule I recommend with SS discs is that they don't just have to be free of suspicious features and doubts, but actually have to have good features that make them appear real- all of these are suspcious and none has anything that makes me think they might be real. There would have to be some pretty solid proof to convince me that they are.