TOPIC:

Rob,

I agree that from the photographs, the two badges you have posted images of do look a bit odd. The "Relic of the Past" examples, on the other hand, clearly have considerable age to them, as is evident from the back of the frame (see below). They are definitely not recent restrikes and are in “mint condition” because they have been behind glass for 120-odd years.

I believe the point of the "Relic of the Past" title lies in the perception that the British had consigned the two Boer republics to history. As far as the Brits were concerned that became true as soon as Pretoria and Bloemfontein fell.





..

Rob, back in 2018 I published a book about the Gouvernement’s Noten of the ZAR. This was based on a decade of research in which I monitored supply and pricing of these Noten from every conceivable outlet online, live auctions and dealer sites a.o. On the basis of that research, I came to the conclusion that certain issues of these noten, notably the high denomination Pietersburg issues, were extremely rare and suggested that based on comparisons with other collectible bank notes, these items should command structurally higher prices. Over the following years two things happened. The first was expected, prices for rare issues climbed, sometimes by a factor of 5 or 10. The second effect though was surprising. The offer of rare issues suddenly increased significantly. This increase did not involve forgeries but consisted of genuine items, noten that were presumed lost but turned out to have sat dormant in collections or Boer War scrap albums for years or decades

The effect that supply increases as a result of structurally higher prices may be at work in the ZAR/OVS badges as well. The OVS badge like you showed for sale at the Dutch dealer could be had for around 25 Pound back in 2010. Now same will cost at least 4 times as much, perhaps enough incentive for a collector to, at least, sell off his doubles.

Forgery only becomes an issue when money can be made with it. This would be through the sexing up of existing items (e.g. adding engraving), reproduction of very rare items that command substantial prices (some rare Nazi badges, bugles used in battle, Confederate war flags etc.) or from mass production where the tooling and upfront cost can be amortised over many items. The pricing of the more common ZAR/OVS badges does not economically justify small scale forgery whilst the market does not reflect numbers that suggest large scale production. So while there may be some dodgy badges around possibly resulting from collectors spending a lot of money to fill an irritating collection gab, there is absolutely no ground for scaremongering or questioning the authenticity of badges like the ones contained in Neville’s Relics of the Past box.

EFV, I do hope you are right. However, CAD/CAM technology has arrived. High resolution surface scanning of the front and back of any original badge enables, at very low cost, exact replication of absoluely perfect front and back dies of any die-stamped sheet-metal badge. Those badges I showed sell in Holland at Euros 250 - 300 each. Even one such badge would pay for a set of dies.
And a wise manufacturer will only allow onto the market a trickle of his dodgy product, so as not to arouse suspicions. I have the sense that something has changed and my suspicions are aroused; time will tell.