Branch Patches - Fantasy or Foreign Made?

[Dave]

All-

As some of you know, I recently purchased several thousand branch patches that were in storage for the past 15 years. These were in a bag with the patches and weren't the "standard" ones. Some of the tags on them (appear to be from a seller or marking tags) appear to be in German handwriting and verbage (e.g. "Pioneer" for Engineer, etc.) I've seen these patches from time to time, but don't know where they were made - or if they are even real. Any thoughts?

Dave

[clebercalado]

I never saw fabrics like this...

Regards from Brazil

Cleber

[DougD]

Dave,

I am pretty sure these are made for tourists in Germany and Russia; I see huge numbers of them when over there and they all seem to have that comic-book style of design.

DD

[Tal Inbar]

Not Soviet, that is for sure, the "comic book look" mentioned by Doug are the Black lines. For example, take a look at this one:

[DougD]

the patch shown by Tal is right; the ones in the first pic have not only the black outlining, but also the images have a "fat" look to them, thus my comic book comment. Nice, but for Bob the tourist from Arkansas.

DougD

[Dave]

Gents-

Thanks for the feedback! They'll all go in a group lot off to e***. I've got about 2000 of the ones like Tal put a photo up of. More than I know what to do with!

Dave

[DougD]

Dave,

I am thinking new merit badge categories for the Boy Scouts....you are ready to supply them!

DD

[Chuck In Oregon]

I have 2-3 sets of a dozen patches each. They sure are different from the ones that prompted this thread. I picked out three that you can compare with three that you can see clearly in the original post. Those black outlines are sure strange.

In mine, the designs which once would have been embroidered are sort of a plastic or vinyl-over-felt (?) with a heavier backing cloth. The designs are pretty detailed, i.e. you can see small details like tank treads and parachute risers and the large borders are made up of diagonal lines inside the wide border lines, much more detailed than you can see from my scan. Mine have no writing at all on any of the reverses except for a price, 72k, stenciled in white on the back of one, which I take to be the original price for the set.

I'm pretty sure the guy from whom I bought these got them by liberating them from a PX or equivalent after independence. I never wondered whether they might be fakes and I'm pretty sure they aren't, but truth is, I never thought that patches might be faked. I see I was wrong about that.

My two cents, and worth every penny.

Chuck