HELP!!! SD collar tabs real or fake?

[Adrian]

I've posted this link before but maybe worth posting again.

There is a wealth of reading, listening and watching material contained within this site. Some of which you may find interesting.

Adolf Hitler and Third Reich Media.

[M422A1]

Charles Sydnor's "Soldiers of Destruction" is a fine starting point. It focuses on the SSTV and concentrates on the prewar years. The SS incredibly complex and often schizophrenic organization. Also read Heinz Höhne "The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS"

Be patient, read, ask questions and you find the answers will come. Happy hunting!

I am reading "Soldiers of Destruction" right now, for the third time! A well-researched book and definitely worth reading (more than once!).
I need to read Heinz Höhne "The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS" again, its been awhile...

Best Regards,
Mike

P.S. Listen to these guys, they only want to help and won't steer you wrong. I could have saved many thousands of dollars over the years if something like this site had been available way back when AND if I had discovered it sooner!

[Tricot]

I am reading "Soldiers of Destruction" right now, for the third time! A well-researched book and definitely worth reading (more than once!).
I need to read Heinz Höhne "The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS" again, its been awhile...

Best Regards,
Mike

P.S. Listen to these guys, they only want to help and won't steer you wrong. I could have saved many thousands of dollars over the years if something like this site had been available way back when AND if I had discovered it sooner!

Outstanding! I need another look at it too. The evolution of the SS is maddeningly complex. And then comes the moment when one realizes an understanding of Weimar Germany, and the Kaiser period is needed to understand it. And then the occupation and early Cold War, the denazification and the post war propagandizing on both sides becomes enticing territory for study.

It amazes me that people collect this stuff and ignore the History.

[Tricot]

Attachment 386794Read the RZM circulars. It is all in there in complete and total detail. Do let me say this, the world of today is not the world of 1934 Germany.

Yessir. Understood. *sigh*

--Reaches in desk drawer and locates Uniform-Markt CD--

[Friedrich-Berthold]

One thing is certain. This medium is far from an ideal way to secure the real knowledge central to the successful collection of SS regalia.
These images and the little bits of knowledge are always incomplete, and they cannot replace a real life time effort to master what is very complex.
The summer of 1969, I read all the books in English on the SS I could find, especially Reitlinger and Hoehne. With Hoehne in 1969, I made the decision to get a PhD, which then took me from that date until 1985.
That is, I spent my whole life with German history from the last years of high school through the beginning of my present assignment (which I began in the year I got my PhD), in which German history is also my full time job, that is, for almost twenty eight years since. German history was more or less my full time job from 1977 until the present, actually.
I began to collect in 1963, and could read German in the year 1972....and on and on. I even made a pilgrimage to London to meet Mollo in the summer of 1971. We had a long, interesting talk, the basis of a later correspondence. I even sold him an SS paratrooper smock as a favor, which availed me nothing. A typical disappointment. What's the price of it?
I am not the measure, but the foregoing has been my level of ambition in what is now almost five decades.
The effort and cost of my collection defy a price tag, either in time or its value in cash.
My experience is no prescription, no direction, no example. Young people have a totally different attitude to knowledge, history, the evidence, etc. I know, because such is my profession.
However, in a time where patience is not a virtue, how you figure it all out is really up to you. The snares and delusions of the present constitute no way ahead.
Also, I have no idea how much money I have spent on books and Nazi regalia since the 1960s, but the sum is considerable.
My experience has enabled me to play the role I do here, but it is a fluke of time and luck.....and more money and effort than most are willing to invest. Nor is the instant purchase for a seven figure sum by high rollers of a major collection and the recycling of the highlights of the Schiffer books much of an accomplishment in my mind.
Patrick Lewis, for instance, is somewhat the age in which I resolved to do this as a calling, but he will find a different universe of treasure, education, and so forth than did I. He can make more of it than I have, but the thing is not done in six weeks or six months, or with ten websites, or a hundred posts on these fora.