2017 May | Sõja ajaloo portaal. Militaria.ee

Need help! Spanish Blue Division Medals

I recently started collecting Spanish civil war and WWII Blue Division items to supplement my TR collection. I picked up this great medal bar containing Spanish Order of Military Merit with Red Distinction (on the left), Spanish Blue Division Royal City Volunteers Cross (center) and the Blue Division Russian Campaign Medal (right). Based on my research of images they all appear authentic however, having never seen or held the campaign medal in person, its seems almost too flat / small, though nicely detailed. I’ve read all the other posts on the forum regarding the talons, etc . but I’m still not sure despite comparing images. Any help would be appreciated

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Illustrierter Beobachter Propaganda Newspaper

This is a newspaper I’d not heard of until the day I stumbled across one for sale online. Immediately struck by the visuals of the thing, and as a steal at £25, I couldn’t rightly let it pass by. You know how it is. Sometimes you see a piece, and it grabs you. You’ll try to ignore it, but it keeps coming back until you scratch that itch and buy it.
Such is the case here. It was advertised as an original copy, and I believe it is. It has that musty smell that you only get from very old paper, and it feels extremely fragile. I wouldn’t know the finer techniques for identifying a period newspaper, so that’s an educated guess on my part.

Preliminary research reveals this to be a copy of ‘Illustrierter Beobachter,’ a propaganda magazine published by the NSDAP from 1926 to 1945. This one is dated 16th/17th March 1935. This issue appears to be entirely dedicated to an official function of some sort, with all the ‘main players’ of the party prominently featured. My overall grasp of German being poor, I would have to guess this was a state funeral of some kind, noting in particular the bearing and laying of a large wreath, and the somber looks on the participants’ faces.
I particularly like the advertisements on one of the pages, a surreal juxtaposition to the bold Third Reich imagery.

I’ve attached the best quality photographs I can manage, to display as much of the fine detail as possible. It’s amazing just how sharp these period photographs can be.

For your perusal.

B.B.

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Scored 2 NCO Tassels (1 From china!)

Scored 2 NCO leather tassels from eBay! All I need is one more, without tassel to deck-out my Type 95 collection.

One is clearly shorter than normal, at 11 inches. Someone speculated that it looked like it might have been broken and re-stitched. I concur. The stitching looks legit and it only has 1 buckle-hole vs the 3 on the one of standard length.

Pics below. They are both old and fragile, though the long one is darker and appears to have been coated with a leather oil. It is still fragile and shows cracks when you bend it.

The one from China worried me. I could have sworn it was coming from Japan, but when the package arrived, it was from China! After close examination, it is clearly legit. So just backs up someone’s statement that there are true collecters in China too

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phony Luftwaffe emblem

There’s a German-made coffee pot for sale at one of the online auction sites claiming to be a Luftwaffe pot that I believe is a phony. AFAIK, the coffee pot is vintage 1950s, and I think the emblem on it is a crude forgery:

Am I correct in believing the above is not a valid Luftwaffe emblem? Not to mention that the manufacturer of the pot (WMF of Geislingen) would not engrave something so crudely.

Attached Images