SS Ring Questions

[odal]

Hi, I am a third reich collector of many, many years. This being what I collect, I also deal in antiques, toys, sports memorabilia, other militaria, many other areas, silver being one of them. As a third reich collector I stay far away from rings, not to say I havent owned a few, but, I do not seek these items out. Being one of the heaviest faked, and easiest items to fake, from this time, I suggest anyone aspiring to be a collector of these types of items [rings, jewelry, etc.], do some serious research and studying for quite some time before ever making any purchase. Being a dealer in silver, I know quite a bit about it. Silver,along with the other precious metals are very soft metals meaning they are very easy to work with for a skilled silversmith. In other words it is fairly easy to make very fine quality reproductions of these actual third reich personal items. I think there are more fantasy pieces than actual repros of real pieces out there on the market because to the untrained anything with a swastika "could be, or could have been" actually from nazi Germany. For the makers of fakes, a convincing fantasy piece is just easier to make than to try to reproduce a quality convincing reproduction of one that actually existed. I.E. the SS honor ring. This had the recipients name and date he received it engraved inside, along with H. Himmler's facsimile signature,and silver content mark [usually 800] all on the inside of the band. Also this type of ring had the seam in the front, which as far as jewelry goes, is almost unheard of. Almost always, seam is in back, sometimes with a very intricate design, no seam. The skull on the SS ring covers up the seam in the front. One more note I dont know if ive ever seen the silver mark, silver content, makers mark, or any stamp on the outside of a ring, or on the front of anything silver as far as jewelry goes. No matter what kind of ring it is, this alone throws up big red flags. IF just 5% of all the rings I see were real, Every person in nazi Germany was like Liberace, and wore 2 or 3 rings on every finger they had !!!!!!!!

As a collector of period jewelry, mainly rings, i agree in most points!
And yes, more than 95% rings you see around are fakes and fantasy items.