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Authentic?


TLeo
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Anyone see anything that stands out as wrong with this patch? I'm really not accustomed to the leather/decal patches as of yet and would love any opinions.

post-5081-0-68594300-1429449462.jpg

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Hi Leo, it is almost identical to the one in Millstein's book. Shading is a little different, but close. According to his book, the original design was decal on leather. Lets see what someone says who has had an original before as their are a lot of repro leather patches now days. But it looks pretty good to me. Do you have any provenance to it? Semper Fi - Jeff

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Tom, I don't like it. The leather is wrong for starters. There are small details in the design that differ from most of the ones accepted as originals. A couple of obvious details are the tomahawk handle (should be the same red used for the nose of the bomb), the left end of the machine gun is short and stubby as opposed to the original design, there are numerous differences in the leather fringes on the dog's outfit (starting with the crease between the Bulldog's left forearm and bicep shown as a large "x" in your example) and his eyes and left ear should have more blue. I seem to recall JPStout identifying one of these on the forum a while back as being a repro, but can't find the thread. I do recall though, that he mentioned that the VMSB 133 design was reproduced quite frequently. I also don't like the sort of dull, fuzzy appearance of the whole patch. It looks like it was artificially antiqued to me. If you go to the Vintage Leather Jacket forum, you can read and see examples of what some of these artists are doing to recreate patches. There is one guy using a scanner to reproduce decals now and apply them to leather. There are a variety of aging techniques they use to get very close to originals in appearance. They aren't doing it to fool collectors (I hope), but as a collector it is unsettling and once a patch leaves the artist's hands, it's hard to say what era they may be from. Finally, in my experience, the Millstein book is a great reference. On the decal patches, the design should be identical for me to feel comfortable. "Almost identical" works with silkscreened on leather designs but not decals in my opinion. Without some really, really strong provenance explaining the differences and era, I'd have to pass on this one. The photo below is from the Rarest USMC patch thread here on the forum and matches the other original examples that I've seen. Jeffro

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usually the real patches are on crazy thin leather.

for that reason alone I don't like it much. looks a little sloppy too.

 

-Brian

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Agree that this is a repro of some type. The colors at least on the scans Do Not look as sharp and bright as on original decal and to my eye the figure is distorted to give the appearance of being fatter. Mort

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  • 1 year later...

The leather is only a bit thicker than a piece of paper. Maybe 1/32". I have several, all look the same, decal on wafer-thin leather.

VMSB-133-500.jpg

VMSB-133b-500.jpg

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