The Secret to Buying Military Badges on eBay

Collecting military badges can be very different to most other forms of collecting. A British cap badge can offer so much of unique insight into the regiment it represents, its past, the traditions, battle honors, regimental motto, history and so with all this will come a certain rarity.

This rarity and shortage of original military badges has created a demand, which has needed to be met. So with British cap badges, this has resulted in the production of copies or re strikes.

This has over the years flooded the market with re strikes and the main problem being that a large proportion of these modern copies are now being sold on eBay by certain sellers as originals. Very often these cap badges will have gone through an "aging process" by chemicals, then maybe polished up give the impression of years of wear and tear.

So if you are considering buying a British military badge on eBay, here are a few obvious things to watch for:

The very rare, and desirable cap badge at auction for a fraction of its real value, if it looks too good to be true, it usually is!

Military Badges that have a slider fixing, when that particular cap badge was only ever made with lugs.

Sellers who always seem to be selling British military badges from an old, or their late father collection, go through their feedback and see if they have sold the same badge before and ask yourself why do they always have an almost endless supply of cap badges.

Sellers who hide the listing number, they have to do this to hide the fact that they will have sold that same "rare" cap badge over and over again.

Personally as a collector I accept that any collection will have some of these re strikes and am happy to have one that fills a gap of one of the rarer cap badges. But I do not want to be mislead into buying a £25 cap badge only to find that its a £5 copy. So if you feel that you have bought an expensive military badge sold to you as original, and it turns out to be a re strike, why not ask for your money back and consider reporting it to eBay, as a possible case of fraud.

I have been a collector of British military badges for 20 years and buying and selling British military badges on eBay for the last 4 years. For more hints and tips on Collecting British Military Badges visit http://britisharmycapbadges.blogspot.com

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