A is for Abzeichen

First-off apologies to anyone waiting on eMails or eMail replies, but as I suspected the other week the move to Andover has been problematical, mostly because Vodafone have seen fit to deny any sort of service to the community - Mobile/Cell-phone as well as Internet? Although Belkin not providing drivers for Windows 7 has meant the back-up plan failed as well! Modern Technology - I swear it's going backwards!

Consequently I'm doing this on my lap in an industrial park with half a battery - I'm watching like a hawk so don't expect it to be spell-checked as at some point I'll hit 'publish' in a panic! Also while I'm trying to follow other Blogs when I get a one-bar signal for a few minutes, commenting is out for a while...that'll please some!

But I will catch-up with everything next weekend and every other weekend thereafter hopefully. In the meantime, by way of one of the unsent eMails; Thanks go to Wouter Wayland of the Netherlands for sending me these, and while it ended up as a mutually beneficial 'swap' he originally proposed sending them to me for nothing, so thanks Wouter - they were in the postal system so long I thought they might have gone AWOL!

These four are all the artillery elements from one of the more sought after sets of WHW (Winterhilfswerk) Tokens from the flag days (Heilpflanzen Des WHW) held every two weeks or so during the latter stages of the Nazi regime. The set is not that rare and I will come back to them another day as I have most of the set now in the storage unit, however it is sought by both figure collectors and WHW/Militaria collectors so there is a greater demand for it.

I have also seen presentation boxed sets in two sizes which were presented to dignitaries and - perhaps - clubs or organisations who raised money separately from the collecting-tins carried by SA-men or the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) and similar girls organisation (Bund Deutscher Mädel) who made-up the bulk of the collectors.

On the right is another item from the set Wouter sent above, in the same silver-grey polystyrene, the others are from a rarer set issued exclusively by the Gau (local authority) of Berlin (in about 1943 if memory serves - I'll get the details right when we come back to them in the future). They seem to have been issued twice, once unpainted in the same silvery-grey plastic and once painted in 'base' coloured plastic to match the figure depicted, in this case police units of the civil and NASDP/Nasi party.

They have a hole for threading so they can be worn to show that the wearer has 'made a donation' although propaganda made it impossible not to contribute, which is why none of these are really rare, not even the Gua issues, there are literally millions of them in the 'odds' drawer by the 'phone, in the attics and cellars and basements and game drawers of Germany, and the homes of German sympathisers, and all over the occupied territories, and come to market often in handfuls, sets or part sets for around 15-quid. You should never pay more than a fiver for a single WHW token and you want to be aiming at around a pound a piece, whether tin, white-metal, paper, wood, ceramic or plastic.

Some others that I happened to have on the hard-drive, these (along with rest of the previous shot) were all purchased at Beltring about three years ago, there was an English dealer asking 15/20 quid each for some pretty tatty WHW's, but plenty of Dutch, Belgian and German dealers had them for a pound or two.

The trumpet with the sig rune in missing its mouthpiece and is a pin-badge, as is the fired-ceramic miner, he's part of a set of about 18 rural and work (arbiter) subjects, the pin set into the ceramic with an early polyurethane resin/two-part epoxy type adhesive. The '88mm is interesting as it appears to be from an undocumented second issue of the common set, being in black plastic over-sprayed in silver paint.

The MG-crew and Horse-rider are also from the common set, there is a version of the rider with a second horse in tow, laying comm's-cable which I have and which will be covered another day. The pack is from a set of belt-order fighting equipment, and was described as a Hitlerjugand set, the accompanying pieces being the canteen, water bottle, zeltbhan-roll etc...I've included a second shot of the Wouter donation and a close-up of the Gestapo-mans arm-band. Oh - and Abzeichen...equals 'token'!