What Was Your First Fake?

[BOB COLEMAN]

I was chatting with another collector of many years on line and was discussing how anyone who has collected at one time or another has been defrauded. It brought back a memory of the first time it happened to me. It was 1957 and I was 12 years old. I would save up my chore money and then venture down by bus to Doc's Trading Post on Broadway Avenue in Chicago. Many times I would arrive only to find the store closed. When open, I would go in and spend my $3-$5 I had saved on something. The man had a large pail full of tinnies at twenty five cents each or five for a dollar. Maker marked SA daggers with a hanger were $5.00(and he had a wall full of them)Army daggers and 2nd model Luftwaffe daggers with hanger and portopee were $7.50. I told Doc I wanted a SS helmet. A few weeks later, I went in to the store and Doc sold me a battle damaged single decal "SS" helmet for $5.00. It was a M-42 with a shrapnel entry hole in the neck guard and a bump on the visor where it came out. I thought it was the neatest thing since I discovered pizza. Girls were still a little ways off! Six months later, I brought it in to another shop only to discover that I had a helmet with a fake Heer decal. The decal was the quality of those used on plastic models. I was crushed!! Of course, at that time, I had no idea what an SS helmet looked like. Reference books were non existant. I scraped off the decal and kept the helmet for a couple of years. I eventually sold or traded it off as it always was a bad memory for me. I wish I still had it today .
Shortly thereafter, I found out why Doc Mann had irregualr hours at his shop. One day while reading the newspaper, I read an article about how Doc had been robbing banks in neighboring states on a regular basis. Seems that Doc had a bad heroin habit! The FBI broke in to his store where he had tried to hide and was taken away for a 20 year vacation.
I would be interested in hearing other stories like mine from our fellow collectors. Anyone have a similar story to add?

[Zeller]

a Gestapo ID disk I bought for few euros in the mid 80's at the Flohmarkt in Wien. I was 17.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Well my first fake wasn't even a fake, as it was a fantasy item. It was a "Balkan" campaign sheild. I was aged 15 at the time and bought it from the late Mike Long's shop in Nottingham. It was £4.95. Mike used to have a box full of fakes, mostly bendy lead based metal horrors all at this price. In my youth and total inexperience I thought these were real. It was only when I was shown some original items did I realise. Fake militaria, who would have imagined such a thing? !!! So I had bought a sucession of fake badges, silver U Boat clasp , 2nd pattern E Boat, etc. All were cast from originals. Once I realised these were fake, I traded them off for a few pounds off an original badge.

Cheers, Ade.

[stuka f]

A spike helmet helmet, I had worked for a summer long at the age of 15.
The same guy had a mummie in his shop at the same price, and I was tempted to go for the mummie but my mother would not let me in with it.So I took the fake prussian dragoon helmet( all compponents where good, exept that they had put som dragoon items on a old firemen's helmet). I would have been better of with the mummie, even if the helmet had turned out to be a genuine one.

[colt45]

Knights cross & a labor party eagle badge... they make some nice looking junk

[HDTony]

I picked a group of party pins (6of them) that turned out to be all fake. Seems that all we read about them untill we learn we still can get it wrong. Even today I still have some reservations but I have learned so much here from the forum and the information passed along is so helpfull.

Tony

[lach470]

Mine was a buckle.....off ebay of all places back when Ebay "had a chance". I believe it was a ww1 buckle (Wurtemberg).

Rob

[DougB]

An old militaria shop in Oahu when I was 14, I bought a bunch of SS insignia, 1 turned out good, the rest - nope. I found this out a few years later and swore off militaria and bought bits and bites of mainly Canadian badges and what not, but got into rock and roll concert poster collecting, rare vinyl and autographed game worn hockey jerseys. But better education brought me back!

[BEAST]

An Afrika Korps tunic that I bought from an American dealer in Aschaffenburg, West Germany. It was actually a USN officer's coat dyed black with fake panzer coller tabs and Afrika Korp cuff title. I have a photo of it somewhere around here. Thus endeth my TR collecting!

[RH1941]

Mine was an SS eagle and skull from a dealer out of the Exton PA. Wish I knew about this site back then.