SS Polizei ID Disc Panzer Grenadere 334

[lazer4856]

Hey, I have the oppertunity to buy this, New to discs, Iv tried reviewing the main forum on this subject regarding "3"'s and "r"'s and how they should appear when a disc is being faked, was hoping someone could give me a hand with this one. thank you very much

[Matt L]

It's a fake lazer, don't bother. The marking doesn't reall make sense since there weren't over 300 men in an Infanterie-type Kompanie, and anyway, the men of the real Polizei-Grenadier-Regiment 3 would have had discs from their various first replacement units, not one from this actual field unit. Generally speaking, SS field unit discs should be immediately considered suspicious. Nearly all will be fakes.

The 'font' is a known bad one- not as common as those posted in the sticky threads you looked in, but I recognized it right away; here are two other examples using it:





In this font the 'r', 'R' and 'g' are all very distinctive so are easily recognizable. Even if the Polizei disc wasn't dubous because of its unit text, the fact that there's one supposedly from 'Norge' that was made with the same stamps 100% proves they're all fakes because you'd never see the exact same lettering on discs from different units; as I've written many times, the discs from different Kompanien in the same Regiment were sometimes different, so no way two very differen Regimenter would ever be the same. Fakers have a limited number of stamp sets (one or two usually), and make all their junk with them so that's the only time you see very different unit discs made with the same stamps.

[lazer4856]

Hey Matt, very greatful for the info and help you provided There a new subject to me, and it seems to be something one really needs to have a grip on to know what to watch out for. Have you ever come accross real or authentic SS field discs? or are they a scarce item to find?

[Matt L]

No problem and yeah, it takes years and years of looking at discs, learning unit structures, etc. to really know this subject since there's so much variation. I've seen a few SS field unit discs, sure, but they're usually units that existed when the war started, just as is the case with the Heer. After September 1939, men were issued discs at their replacement units and only rarely at field units (if their original disc were lost, sometimes newly created units would issue discs, etc.). So one does see LAH, Hohenstaufen, several Totenkopf elements, etc., but generally the earliest incarnations that existed before or at the start of the war. Units created during the war generally wouldn't have issued discs, so its an easy way to spot a fake.

Real SS discs in general are pretty hard to come by; at its height, my collection contained over 300 regular Heer, Luftwaffe and KM discs, but only I think it was 12 SS. The Waffen-SS was only something like 1/10 the size of the Heer so there are correspondingly fewer discs, and they're so heavily faked that the real ones are drowned out for the most part. 99% of what you see for sale is probably fake.