a Mutterkreuz question

[Jo Rivett]

If one of them are fake Jo. It sure has me fooled, but then again it would not be the first time.

Eric

You and me both

I had assumed that collectors would be judging them the same way as a other small enameled items, enamel, contours/construction, quality etc... but just wanted to be sure, because you never know, a guy who specializes in them, may have another "obvious" pointer that we dont use, or even know of. I think it would be fair to wait and see if any more pointers are mentioned.

The "signature, or writing" on the reverse that Tom mentioned is actually what i am looking at here.

[StuG III]

One notices that the points of the cross ends are more rounded on the fakes as well.

Tom

[Jo Rivett]

The only difference i can spot between my MC and the one in the first post is the difference of the lettering on the back. The 16 seems smaller on my MC, and the D is less Italic on my example. Could just be a different maker.

Cheers, yes i agree, and certainly there were many makers, as well as sub-contractors making these during the TR era, so logically there are going to be small differences, seeing as there were many sizes too, many different dies etc etc.... and we also dont know how the makers (or people who made dies for others) transfered the Signature onto their dies - was it from an official stencil? master die, or just a piece of paper? so logically here, personal interpretation as well as "the human hand" will come into play, and have to be acknowledged by all on this matter.

[Pryo]

Here are my three examples if you would like to compare them. The chain is period as well

[Feuerbach]

Also the curl of the D seems to nearly touch the letter on my MC, while on the MC in the first posts the is clearly a gap in between the curl and the letter D.
Like Metallwarenfabrik said, there were many makers, and not all are the same.
Still I must say the MC's on the first post look original to me judging on the patina, detal and finish.

[Feuerbach]

Look nice and crisp to me Pyro, can you show the lerrering on the back to see if these are also a little different from the others?

[StuG III]

Just as a matter of interest, the top two are Jo's, the bottom two are mine, which have both been given the thumbs up by the guys in the know. As Jo says, slight differences, but by and large very similar.

Tom

[Pryo]

Here are the backs, sorry for the quality

[Feuerbach]

The signatures, lettering and numbers are different. Non are exacly the same, never noticed this before. look at the D's, the spacing of the date 1938 and the A of the signature.

[Jo Rivett]

Need to side track for a bit. I am working on something about embellishments, and how the collector can tell, if an embellished, engraved item is more likely to be from the period, or more likely to be a recently done embellishment on an original mundane item. This tied in nicely with a comment that Ray Cowdery made in the early 1990`s in a book, when he said that it is not possible to tell if a dog tag was stamped yesterday, or in 1940 (something to that effect) and anyone who claims he can, is boasting... talking nonsense.

Anyway, long story, short version follows. I dont agree with him about this, and started to look at engraved, stamped, impressed and embellished items a bit closer. Paying particular attention to the lips of the engravings under high magnification, observing the natural wear and tear found on the lips, edges if you will. As small as many of these markings are, under high magnification, every last scrape is revealed, and tells you itself, whether it was done last week, or whether it is honest. That is basically what i am looking for on engraved/impressed items/markings, a natural, and honest, patina on the edges of an engraved, or impressed marking/scrape/etching etc... and indeed an honest patina on the surface - if the item is from the period.

I will demonstrate with a dog tag. I took one large image of a portion of the letter O.



Now the screen size of the image above is 800 x 600. And represents an actual area of around 0,3-0,5 mm.
I am sure that even with this small portion of the letter image, you are starting to see what i mean by the "natural patina" around the lips of the impressed marking? But, if i take 20 separate images of that letter, and piece them all together, i create an image with a size of 6000 x 8000, around 50MB, and far to large to show. But, if i resize that huge image, you are still left with a large image, that shows you the full letter at once, with all its "honest" patina. (If it was a fake, you would also see this of course)



Of course, i also embellished, engraved, etched and "ruined" a few period items to see the differences, to see what a modern etch (over a period worn surface - on original period material) looks like under magnification compared to an original, and all the rest. Had to be done, otherwise we cant form any opinion if only a one-sided analysis takes place - anyway, I took both MCs in post 1... and i inspected one letter on the reverse of each, a number actually, the number 3.



I have to admit to doing a thorough analysis on both a while ago, and had already reached an opinion, that one of them was not genuine. I was just waiting for more "pointers" that i could support that opinion with. And one of those came while on my "embellishment trip-search"