Friday, January 4, 2008

ITS A FAKE!!! Transatlantic England R&W


Transatlantic England Red & White Sold on Ebay Recently


Ebay Auction


John Shaw Reports

"I recently picked up a TAC England patch on that auction site that was a newly made item. I used paypal and the AMEX card as I was a little nevrous to send such big money. I confronted the seller who started the refund process before I sent the patch back. I want to stop this seller even though I got my money back. Any one know a legal authority in Seattle or the State of Washington I can pursue this transaction with? Is it worth my time to stop this guy. I think he (Fernando Turin) may use other sales id's ichimac, turinartola. Any other information is helpful if this moves forward."


Transatlantic England Red & White (Real)


What is so disturbing about this auction on Ebay is the seller clearly tried to fool potential buyers (at least that is the impression I got). The recent ISCA Journal that came in the mail describes that patch as solid based patch.

Here is the sellers exact words describing the patch.

"I got this patch several weeks ago, I found it in my grandfather's house while it was being vacated to be sold. The only information that I have about this patch, is that it belongs to the American Boy Scout unit stationed in Heyford England."

Here is the auction if you want to see it. (Click Below).

EBAY AUCTION Fake Transatlantic England

I hope the buyer gets his money back. What most collectors do not realize is...that the Transatlantic England Red & White strip has no paperwork or reference that the council ever ordered a Transatlantic England Red & White. Its purely been spread by collectors. While lack of proof doesn't mean its fake it is odd how I have the first order form reference from the Transatlantic Trail Newspaper when the Council first switched from community strips to the Red & Whites it does not list England as an option. It has Great Britain on the order form.

Here is article from the Fall 1957 Transatlantic Trail:

"The Executive Board of the Transatlantic Council has approved the wearing of the Local Council Shoulder Insignia by the entire council membership in place of the community strips.

The Council Strip (Cat.#157) contains the name of our council and the country in which your unit is located. Council Strips are now available for Italy, Libya, Spain, France, Germany, Morocco, Great Britain, Austria, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark. They may be ordered in any quantity at 15¢ each for immediate shipment from the Council Office."

Who knows for sure. An England may have been created later along with the Crete, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Moscow, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Sweden, Turkey, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia. My theory if one was ever made and issued it was made at the same time as the Scotland and Ireland one but those two strips appear to be a dime a dozen while a country as large as England is virtually unseen. It so odd its almost fishy.

At least you can be sure the Denmark is real...Yay! If your going to spend big money for Denmark and England I would go with the Denmark one first. At least there is a reference to it.

1 comment:

quilshan said...

Calling this a fake (at this point) is jumping the gun. While I am very suspicious of this RWS, I am not convinced that it is a fake. Then again, I am not convinced that it is real either. There is no data to support either claim. Don't get me wrong - I want to know the truth, so I'm keeping an open mind to both sides of the argument. Having said that, I am hiring a private investigator in the Seattle area (where the patch originated) to run a criminal background check on the seller. The seller appears to be foreign, so it may be difficult to find his information... but it is worth a shot.

FYI, I bought the first example of this strange RWS back in July and was the first to report it to Patch-L. As you can see from the photo, it is fully embroidered, cloth back, appears to have polyester threads, and is about 10-15% smaller than a standard RWS. Here's what I reported:

The seller listed the patch for a $5 minimum bid and did a poor job of describing the patch... which is why I got mine cheap compared to the two recent sales. The RWS was sold separately with about 20 military items that originated out of Europe. It was the only Scout badge. During the auction, I took the time to look up the military insignia and found some of the badges posted on the Heyford base web site. I also confirmed that the Heyford base had an active BSA troop. Most of the sellers patches were from the early to mid 1970's which does align with the introduction of polyester threads. FYI, the glue on the back of the patch that I won showed distinct age discoloring as if it was glued in a scrap book for a period of time - something that would be difficult to manually create. I'm a fairly advanced collector with 25 years of experience and would have a hard time calling this a fake. Yes, the embroidery style is strange. Yes, it does appear to have polyester threads... but we need data to determine how to classify this beast. Until that data arrives, we are only guessing about the authenticity.

Frank Kern
frankkern@oaflap.com