Bullion Patches

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Recently I have bought and sold a few AAF theater made bullion patches from WW2. Obviously they are not as common as the factory made embroidered patches are. But I was wondering,..... just how scarce are they? Were they made by individuals, or small family manufacturing enterprises? There must be a book on the subject somewhere I would imagine,........[huh]

 

[Zemke Fan]

Good morning, Major...

...glad to see you're up and about so early. You ready for today's mission? It's more fun during "Big Week." With these new 150 gallon tanks, we can stick with the big friends all the way to the target. You ready for some serious action?

Oh, yeah, back to topic... Good question about the origins of bullion insignia. Let's do some digging on this subject. In the meantime, here are a couple of examples that I like a lot.

Here's a DAF patch that I bought on eBay and recently resold. I'm commissioning repros of this one:

A 12th AAF patch that I followed on eBay but ultimately didn't buy:

 

[ShanghaiJack]

Bullion

Bullion in the CBI was quite common.
I would not say rare at all.
Europe and the Med. common
as well, but maybe the case is
that as time goes on, everything
is growing more scarce...
I think I bought my first bullion
CBI Patch [mint] in the 1980's for
a dollar... Times have changed...

:fing28:

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Yep,...ya know it's gonna be a good day when you DON'T get shot down, and,....

...glad to see you're up and about so early. You ready for today's mission? It's more fun during "Big Week." With these new 150 gallon tanks, we can stick with the big friends all the way to the target. You ready for some serious action?

Oh, yeah, back to topic... Good question about the origins of bullion insignia.

......ya also manage to score!
I just got this beauty on ebay a short while ago. One of the nicer examples of a CBI buillion I've seen there. I think this one will go on my tunic. May be fairly common as I have seen the same design before. But I like these so much better than the embroidered type.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Does seem to be the case.

Bullion in the CBI was quite common.
I would not say rare at all.
Europe and the Med. common
as well, but maybe the case is
that as time goes on, everything
is growing more scarce...
I think I bought my first bullion
CBI Patch [mint] in the 1980's for
a dollar... Times have changed...

:fing28:

Seems it was a question of supply? ( Just speculating here.) Large quantities of uniform patches were probably not top priority cargo as ammunition, food, and etc. were imperative. Especially in the CBI theater, as it was a longer supply line.
It's odd though, that "The Officer's Guide" makes no mention of theater made bullion patches. I would think that the army would want every uniform to be just that, uniform. But I guess as long as the regs. didn't specifically forbid some cool looking custom patches,.......hey, why not?

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Found a little bit of info here.

Not much but interesting none the less.




http://www.angelfire.com/md2/patches/variations/var2cbi.html