AVG 1st Pursuit Squadron Leather Patch

[unclegrumpy]

Back in the day, I met Tex Hill and several other AVG guys myself at number of events...including Airshows...and bought a few bits from them myself. Those guys were usually having a lot of fun and enjoying the attention, and selling things....but not their own things....but new prints, patches, bloodchits, T-shirts, signed photos, and on it goes.

In this case, your conspiracy discussion is irrelevant, because you could find out more about this patch. Your patch, if you could nail it down to someone, or at least confirm it's originality, would be worth a four digit number, not "a few hundred bucks". It would be a historic item that probably deserves a different fate than being sewn on a jacket.

However, it is your patch, and yours to do as you please with. My only point is I would want to know.

 

[Ed Rooney]

I'm thinking of licking it, and if it tastes like moo shu, it is real. If it tastes like carne asada, not real.

Historical guitars with visible wood grain are authenticated through the grain pattern. They found John Lennon's stolen Gibson J-160E that way.

Anyway, I'm going to continue researching it. Four figures is nice, but I would probably still hang on to it and frame it.

 

[Silver Surfer]

i like the licking idea, ed. ive just ided a 11/jg51 jagdgeschwader [ weeping raven? wise owl?] luftwaffe patch that i have. spose it might taste like schnitzel or strudel? i would settle for beer, though.

 

[unclegrumpy]

I'm thinking of licking it, and if it tastes like moo shu, it is real. If it tastes like carne asada, not real.

With CBI patches...skip anything that moos...best to go with baaaa...instead

 

[Ed Rooney]

I just got some close ups.

It looks like it was painted directly on leather with a dark brown, pebbled finish, like a goatskin. The white paint appears to have bubbled when going on, and there is a glaze or sealant over everything, including the areas exposed by cracked paint. I would think that if it were vintage, maybe some more of the green/tan paint would crack and come up. I just don’t know what to make of it at this point.

 

[Silver Surfer]

none of this rules out authenticity, as different colored paints are made of different ingredients. because of this the different colored paints have different weights per volume, ie: cads-heavy, pthalos [essentially dyes]-light. oil based paints do not dry though the process of evaporation exactly [acrylics do dry by evaporation of the water in them], they dry by way of chemical reaction. the bubbling is a head scratcher. i would posit that the white was applied over the tan and dried with bubbles due to the tan or first layer of white not being entirely dry. thought dry to the touch. some oil based paints multiple days to dry. also, if the hides were damp, or poorly tanned, like those goat hides tanned with urine, that would have an effect on the finished work over time.

 

[unclegrumpy]

I agree with Silver Surfer, and don't think anything you have mentioned pushes this in one direction or the other. It is not uncommon for original patches to have been varnished, either when made or later in their lives on a jacket to help preserve them. The different characteristics of the paint is often a good sign, but again not one you can always base anything on, so in this case it is another neutral. The bubbles are a bad sign, because they tend to indicate artificial aging, but again not always.

What you need is to find are some known original examples to compare to.

 

[Ed Rooney]

While not a original, I came across this today. It is from some site which skimmed it from ebay, and the leather patch is a good reproduction of mine, including the artistic style of the Eve, and Adam’s hands. The seller states that it is a repro of an original that he has.

His text:

Flying Tigers AVG 1st Pursuit Squadron Lot. Includes (3) 3X5 index cards with signatures of 3 AVG Aces. Charlie Bond with 7 recorded Air - to - Air Victories. Dick Rossi with 6 and Joe Rosbert with 6. Included is a leather 1st Squadron patch that I personally hand crafted and patterned from an original that I am selling. I am selling my entire AVG and Civil War collection of 25 years, due to heath issues. Please check out the other items. Thank you.

—

I would certainly like to see the original.