Please help Identify my disk

[NineLives]

Hi guys,
I'm really new to this so please be nice
I picked up this dog tag when I was in Oslo 5 or 6 years ago. I was told it came from the wreck of the Blücher.
I'm pretty sure its a fake from the research I've done since, but would like a second opinion...

[Datrus]

I am no expert but the corrosion looks fake. Wait for more opinions.

Regards, Lars

[Matt L]

Welcome to the forum It looks like a normal KM disc to me and the corrosion doesn't look fishy at all- I've had a bunch of buried KM discs all with similar oxidation and holing. I believe the marking should be 'MS' to indicate 'seemännischen Dienst' (seaman service) if he was a shipboard sailor though; 'MK' apparently refers to him being in Laufbahnen (occupations) XIV, XV, or XVII, which were Marinearillerielaufbahn, Kraftfahr-Laufbahn, Waffenwart-Laufbahn (mit Untergruppen)- all shore occupations. The real issue for the story is his roll number- 31133 is quite high and I have images of discs issued in 1940 numbered just 1456 and 4835. Clearly a fair number of men were inducted into the Kriegsmarine that year, however it seems unlikely they could have reached 31000+; not to mention at the time they were still including the year so both those discs are marked '40'. Yours having such a high number and no year and a shore occupation code suggests pretty strongly this man wasn't on the Blücher. So while the disc is real, the source is dubious.

[Datrus]

Nice to know i was wrong. Never seen these before.

Regards, Lars

[Noobkilla73]

Interesting piece.

[Matt L]

Nice to know i was wrong. Never seen these before.

Regards, Lars

Well it's one of those things that one simply has to see many, many examples of to really get a feel for what's real- and then the fake ones kind of stand out as not fitting. Usually fake corrosion isn't so substantial as this, for example, with not nearly so much white crystalline material present. And of course one has to bear in mind that it's only worth going to the trouble of 'aging' a disc so much if it's valuable- and that the poorer condition that aging causes won't detract from the value excessively- in this case the disc itself isn't particularly valuable, so there's really no good reason to fake it let alone age it to this extent.

[Datrus]

I actually thought it was a failed attempt to fake corrosion.

[NineLives]

Thanks for the info guys
So you think that its an original just not from the Blücher?

Once again thank you.