Mysterious German tags found in Spain

[Sajer]

Hello:

I have been offered these tags recently from a relative that has a something in between an ironmonger / antiquity shop he told me they have been strolling around his shop for about 30 years but he is not able to tell what they are, as far as my knowledge goes some of them have marking that recall the legion condor tags but I,m not 100% sure could be all fakes could be good ones.
Any help

[bigmacglenn]

It appears to me that these are indeed Legion Condor tags...excellent find!
cheers, Glenn

[Matt L]

Have you actually seen confirmed Legion Condor discs Glenn? I haven't so can't comment on the text or structure, but the discs themselves don't have any features that make me wonder about them; a couple even have corrosion marks indicating there were cords on them at some point.

[bigmacglenn]

I was comparing the similarities with this one....having trouble uploading.
cheers, Glenn

[Matt L]

Gnarly- what's the provenance for that one? Too bad the picture isn't bigger and clear- the letters do look similar, but we can't say the are the same (assuming the disc has proper provenance to be a comparator). It is a bit strange that it's 'ST. KP.' whereas these ones are just 'ST.'; normally a flying unit wouldn't have a Stabskompanie (assuming that's what ST. KP. is in this case)- it's a Stabsschwarm. But then this was so early, I don't know how much of 'normal' Luftwaffe stuff applies. That they're different, regardless of the odd marking, is at least a question.

[Matt L]

I just had a quick look around and found this photo:



Apparently this disc was bought by someone and he posted it on a German forum asking if it was real. Nobody could say since he didn't have any provenance, but notice that it's completely different than the ones in question here. AND the first thing I was was that there's an EXTREME amount of wear on the neck cord holes, and the edges of the wear grooves look fairly sharp- which makes me immediately wonder if they've just been filed in. It takes a long time to wear a zinc disc like that- as a test, I once wore an original, unissued disc for a whole year and there was no indication at all left in the metal at the end. It seems unlikely to me that that much wear is possible given how long the Legion Condor was around for.

So it does seem there may be fakes out there- luckily the ones being evaluated here are different I don't think the one Glenn posted is the same either- the '8's look taller, like the possible real ones.

[Sajer]

Condor tags are quite rare I collect spanish civil war tags and I have just seen a couple of orginals this is due that german presenence in Spain never went over 4000 soldiers in the field (14000 during the whole war). There are some tags that share similarities to Condor ones but others have strange markings as 3KS wich are a mistery for me but the guy that gave them to me insisted that they came together.

[Matt L]

Yeah, that's what I'd have expected- so I was surprised to find any to be honest.

Since 'J' stands for Jagd-Staffel, I wouldn't be surprised if 'KS' is Kampf-Staffel, since the Legion Condor had bombers as well as fighters. Everyone marked their discs a little differently- notice how even the J88 discs vary from unit to unit sometimes- so it wouldn't be weird that Kampf-Staffel isn't just 'K' since Jagdstaffel is just 'J'. I don't know that's what it is, but it's a reasonable possibility.