Fox, Morigi or Moriarty, It’s all in the Name, More Fake Cap badges

For the better part of seven decades I’ve been collecting British and Commonwealth armament and militaria, and for the past nine years have attempted to convey in this blog, the figurative minefield that exists for everyone from beginning collector to advanced/experts in the field.

 

Having been burned many times over the years, fortunately never too severely, I have personally ceased further serious collecting, resting and enjoying the fruits of my labors, the good, bad, and questionable. As a realist rather than a purist,  I think I can identify all my conscious deliberate fillers, which are there only because a while back I reconciled to the fact that the originals only resided in museums, extremely wealthy collections, or existed in miserable deteriorated condition.

 

With full acknowledgement and gratitude to Dubaiguy aka Mark of the British and Commonwealth Military Badge Forum, the author would like to continue the ongoing saga of the production and sales of known fake cap badges.

 

In a recent set of images in that forum he presented a whole new source of counterfeit badges this author was not aware of. They are the product of a nefarious individual by the name of Marshand Morigi who practiced his “skills” in the 1960s and 70s, along with a more recent cohort in crime, Martin Marsh, both originating in Great Britain. Somehow the name Morigi triggered in my mind another, that of Sherlock Holmes’ arch villain, Professor James Moriarty.

 

Morigi purchased the badges from a certain John Morris (now deceased) of Aston in Birmingham, who owned the dies, also made in Birmingham, and had them stamped out by several other Birmingham manufacturers, including Gladmans. Morigi also tried his hand at British Special Forces cloth insignia during the same time frame.

 

I’m not certain whether I have any of the metal badges, but am absolutely certain (and have so identified) a rather fair number of the cloth variety. Many of which can be seen in the following blog article; https://arnhemjim.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-gallimaufry-of-militaria.html . Following image is a sample of the offerings at the time.

 

Returning to the metal cap badges, Mark has provided images of a series of Morigi’s catalog pages. It provides the collector with another series of “mug shots” of badges to be aware of, and cautious to avoid without an established source and sound provenance. Personal apologies for the small size of the images. They can be copied and enlarged to a limited extent without a significant loss of resolution. However, I think most collectors can identify the cap badges which have been duplicated. Once again an overused cliché, “It’s a jungle out there!”.