SS 15 Identification Disk - real or repro any help would be grand

[Geoffrey Hebel]

Hello,
I have been a long time lurker on this forum and, finally had something i felt would be worth posting about. I was given this item today and, while i know what it is i know almost nothing about it beyond that it MAY be a SS identification disk.
I have been around for a little while and, am aware that these things were stamped out in eastern Europe after the war as bring back trophies or just for the sales market.

While i am fairly certain this is a reproduction (i would say about 70%) I have always followed the saying better safe than sorry.

This forum has been a great source of information on other Axis items i have found and, i am looking forward to hearing from you all.

p.s. - if this is the wrong place please let me know so i can yank this down promptly with my apologies

[octavian]

This particular font strikes me odd.

[Wagriff]

The unit markings do not seem to make much sense. 15th SS Artillery? And no blood type?

[Geoffrey Hebel]

one of many things that had me skeptical

[Eike41]

I think the disk is supposed to read Artillery Regiment (AR) 164 Soldier number 15, however Artillery regiment 164 was part of the Wehrmacht not the SS.

[Wagriff]

Well, technically, there Was an SS 15th Artillery...of the 15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS(the 1st Latvian), but I don't imagine the tag comes from them...?

[Matt L]

I don't see anything that immediately jumps out as suggesting the disc is bad- in fact overall it looks pretty realistic. The font's not a known bad one and looks 'correct' enough. William's right there was indeed an SS-Artillerie-Regiment 15, but not a 164, so the latter has to be the Stammrollennummer. Although the layout is odd, sometimes discs are marked strangely like this. No blood group letter isn't a problem as they weren't universally done- lots of issued discs lack one. The presence of a letter indicates the disc was (or is supposed to have been) issued, but no letter doesn't mean it wasn't. Unfortunately, that's about as far as really can be said without a known example from this unit or an SS-Soldbuch to show what the markings were actually like.

This is one I'd put in the 'worth a risk' category for a price low enough not to be painful if it turns out to be bad because it could well be real. If it was just given to you, that's a real bonus since all you can be is possibly pleasantly surprised

[Geoffrey Hebel]

Yes it was given to me along with a box load of medals, badges, hats and a pair of dagger. this was one of the items that had me scratching my head over whether was real or not as i have never actually seen a real one except pictures. have seen plenty of reproductions

[Geoffrey Hebel]

i found that one too after a bit of digging around on the internet

[Matt L]

Well this is a case where the odd marking, to me, is a good thing- fakers get things recognizably or they put a lot of extras or they copy real text that's clear; this one's obscure and not so obvious what it is immediately and that's not typical for a fake. The disc, stamping and age all look legitimate, so overall I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out to be real. But since nearly every unit's Erkennungsmarken were unique, the only way to tell, as I said, is to locate a 100% provably real example, or a document that shows the text- either of those would support or dismiss this example.