Rare! Friedrich Linden, Lüdenscheid Kriegsabzeichen für Minensuch - U-Boots-Jagd - und Sicherungsverbände.

[Adrian]

Sometimes when you collect a specific area or item and try to gather all available variants you quickly discover which are the rarest and as such, whenever one such badge arrives on the market, you have to snap it up whatever the condition because you never know if or when you will see another.

Here is one such badge, a Friedrich Linden Minesweeper. The Linden Minesweeper badges are very, very hard to find. There are five variants, a CupAl which I managed to find a year or so ago, three tombak variants defined by the reverse hardware and a zinc badge.

This badge is visually acceptable from the front but the pin and catch have been replaced, possibly a period repair judging by the very nice pin. It's a solid pin but has been drilled out to take the hinge pin and is actually a very neat piece of work.

As far as I can tell, the inverted hinge block and pin are original to the badge and have not been removed (the pin has been removed to take the replacement pin) or re-attached which is good because it defines this badge as being variant M1.4.3. Originally the pin should have been round wire and the catch a round wire ? shaped type.

The badge shows signs of heavy wear and has been vaulted, possibly during this process is when the catch and pin became damaged by a heavy handed sailor.

There is not much finish left on the wreath but the waterspout still retains a good amount of silver wash.

One noticeable feature of the badge is that it is a very solid and heavy hunk of metal weighing in at a whopping 35.97g. Some of the weight can be accounted for by the repair but even so, it is a chunk of a badge.

[MAP]

Nice. Agree that this has a very chunky look to it.

Congrats

[Norm F]

Always nice to see an FLL regardless of the condition!

Best regards,
---Norm

[martinw]

Very hard to find with that pin set up.

Cheers,Martin.