Fake CAP insignia on eBay

[NIN]

Wait, whoa, back the Command Module up..

CAP Parachute wings _NOT_REAL_?

Since when?

Gentlemen, you definitely need to reacquaint yourselves with Civil Air Patrol history, especially that of Michigan Wing's Group 9 during the period from 1942 to about 1951.

A) CAP had at least one "Parachute Group," Michigan Wing's Group 9, that consisted of two parachute jumping squadrons, a parachute rigger squadron and a (pardon the term, but it dates from the 1940s) "Negro Glider Flight." (Ugh, the fact that CAP was segregated like that still works my nerves). Other wings may have had parachute jumping units, as well, especially out west, but those I am less sure of.

B) This parachute group wore a parachutist insignia that consisted of embroidered jump wings with the tri-prop superimposed on the right sleeve of the service coat.  Unsure about wear on any other uniform.

C) This insignia was, to my knowledge, not "unofficial," but rather completely authorized for wear on the uniform (although, admittedly, I have not seen any uniform guidance from the 1940s that says that.. I have other historical information showing this insignia being worn.  I suppose it may have been "unofficial" but I'd be really surprised if it was)

D) The parachute group actually had its own airfield and conducted parachute jumps into war bond rallies and other events.

E) One of CAP's WWII fatalities was that of a MI Wing jumper.

I have a historical monograph on the subject written with the help of the former MI Wing historian, Maj SueAnn F'Geppert, that was published in, I believe, an insignia/patch collectors magazine.



EDITED TO ADD ATTACHMENT.  (one of the gentlemen interviewed for that monograph, Eugene Cousineau, is the father of one of my jumpmasters when I learned how to skydive in the 1990s)

[Stonewall]

cant wait to see this one show up somewhere nearby.......

Could be worn on the opposite side of this...


Created by cadets of SER-FL-383 in 1990.

[vmstan]

Wow, my boss is always giving me crap about when I tell him I'm doing training that weekend, going to a meeting that night, etc, about how "so when are you going to learn to jump out of a plane" ... and I always have to explain that we don't do that... but now I guess I can say "we used to do that ... just like we used to drop bombs on Germans."

[Eclipse]

MCCS patch from Texas...hm...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Patch-CAP-Civil-Air-Patrol-McHenry-Composite-Squadron_W0QQitemZ110492618514QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item19b9df8f12

Probably just a collector - the patch looks authentic.

[alamrcn]

This guy certainly isn't the first person to make reproduction CAP insignia. The production of "commemorative" pieces to honor historical preservation of long gone or hard to come-by insignia is even somewhat accepted in the militaria collecting community.

But the rate at which this guy is making them, and only one of each, it's going to be almost impossible to determine years down the road that these pieces were not the actual ones used by Civil Air Patrol. Can you image a historian 50 years from now coming across those subdued patches? At some point, they may... No, WILL be accepted as authentic!

I'm going to try and document them as best I can, and "out him" on the CAP Patches website - where he's getting the scans.

[alamrcn]

Attempts have been made to get a C&D to this person. The problem that arises is that we cant get a definative lock on the location for mail.

Robert Lafond
P.O. Box 176, Catbangen
San Fernando City, La Union
Philippines, 2500

That's the address on the envelopes of the items he sells on eBay. And I think National HQ contacting eBay to get him off there is a GREAT plan! I don't know where else he'd find any market for them.

FWIW, myself and a few others are I know are standing together on obstaining from purchasing his fakes. The two main buyers, whom I've traded with in the past, were made aware that what they are purchasing are knock offs. I guess they've decided to continue to support Mr Lafond's venture into CAP replicas and have been bidding eachother up to rediculous prices! I wonder what will run out first: their checking account or the number of different patches his sewing machine can make?

Darin - Thanks for the cleaned up PDF of the Michigan Parachutists article from the ASMIC paper. Looks much better than the photocopy version I've been hauling around for years.

[NIN]

Darin - Thanks for the cleaned up PDF of the Michigan Parachutists article from the ASMIC paper. Looks much better than the photocopy version I've been hauling around for years.

I scanned it, cleaned up the graphics as best as possible (from a photocopy, not spectacularly), OCR'd the text, relaid it out in Word and then recreated the PDF.

Would love to find an original.

[Hawk200]

I have a set of WWII CAP parachutist wings. Tatooed on my right bicep. 

Is my bicep potentially violating CAP's trademark on a set of insignia that hasn't been worn in about 47 years?

Probably fine until you try to sell your bicep. Then they'll probably try to hit you up with infringement and failure to license.

I have a historical monograph on the subject written with the help of the former MI Wing historian, Maj SueAnn F'Geppert, that was published in, I believe, an insignia/patch collectors magazine.

That's a pretty slick monograph. I'd seen it before, but it was mostly unreadable it had been photocopied so many times. Nice to see a good copy.

A jump squadron is an interesting concept. No way we could do it these days, but it's a neat idea.

[SarDragon]

I just looked through this book, and there was zero mention made of any type of parachute wings. Zero. I'm wondering if they weren't one of those kool, but unauthorized, items that were worn BITD.

[alamrcn]

Lt Col Ragan put the Collectors Catalog together using the research of Col Morse, Col Hopper, and the rest of the National Historical Committee. He documented mostly "official" nationally used or recognized items, and minor variations there of.

I think in the Forward, he mentions unit patches and other localized insignia would be included in a forthcoming manuscript. The parawings (and related insignia) were only known to be used by the "show jumpers" in and around Michigan. Unfortunatly, it never became a nation wide program. I believe the reproduction of the wings appeared in Lt Col Howard's Civil Air Patrol Unit Patches, Vol. 3 and later in Col Schell's unpublished U.S. Civil Air Patrol Unit and Special Activity Patches.

When that book above was published in 1986, militaria collectors of all types had the very first complete reference to Civil Air Patrol insignia. It also caused the "market" of CAP insignia to rise substantially in price.

There is an update to this book which I'm sure Maj Shaw can speak about, that Col Schell was just finishing at the time of his death.

[Major Carrales]

Wait, whoa, back the Command Module up..

I meant the tatoo, not the wings.

[alamrcn]

Here is a patch that I'm particularly worried about...



Someone who probably is only a "general" insignia collector, has already bid on this. Are they thinking it's the real deal, or an unknown variation of the actual worn insignia? The actual ones are dark blue, and not black. But unlike most of the other fake patches, he got the measurements correct! I doubt the buyer even realizes it's a fake. Hopefully when it's in his hands he'll clearly see it isn't from the early-50s. But the misinformation from this one piece could spread like a virus!

Just look what has happened with those three "Markmanship" patches that CAP supposedly had. The appeared in one collector's reference book in error, and now they are all over the internet and shows being sold as Civil Air Patrol patches - despite the efforts to subdue the falsehood.

[alamrcn]

An update on FreedomFifty2k's counterfits...

I've used the "report an item" feature on about two dozen of Bob Lafond's items over the last month. eBay's automated complaint system is very limited, and mostly deals with big policy breakers like selling a machine gun or a human liver. And the copyright options are more for pirated media than anything. So anyway, eBay doesn't seem to care about my complaints because his existing auctions remained and many new ones followed.

I contacted Bob three times using eBay's messaging system with questions, and received replies back such as "I don't make patches" and "I'm buying several collections". He said he doesn't have to list the patches as reproductions, because he is not inferring they are originals. He did admit to using identifications and descriptions from my website, but not the pictures - and no answer on why one of my image file names appeared in an auction. No he claims to be "visiting Maryland" and "purchasing another Civil Air Patrol collection". If these are the dozen or so that he put up yesterday, they look exactly like all the others in craftsmanship. And what do you know, every one of them is displayed on the CAP Patches website!

For almost 14 years, I've shared pictures of Civil Air Patrol uniform history without incident. Although there is a Copyright notice on the website, I've never taken meassures to disable "right-clicking" on the images or even add a watermark to them. Today, I deleted the over 1000 full-size images from the website, leaving only thumbnails. I will not contribute to this forgery and tainting of our organization's uniform history!

If you collect CAP memorabilia: PLEASE do not buy from this greedy man! It only fuels him to continue making even more fakes. I know the two people who are buying almost every item he lists, and they both have been made aware (by a couple people now) that they are spending a LOT of money on reproductions. Both of these men have sold off parts of their collections before, and I'm worried will do so again - thus dispursing these fakes further out into the field. Because of this, I will soon be putting up a special page on the CAP Patches website dedicated to identifying these fakes.

Thank you to those who have expressed your shared concern on this issue.

[Eclipse]

I noticed he seems to have ramped-up production on things in the last couple of weeks.

Right-click blocks are useless, too easy to circumvent.  I would suggest a watermark such as VG uses across the
whole of the insignia, though that's not going to stop him from making the patches themselves.

[James Shaw]

There is an update to this book which I'm sure Maj Shaw can speak about, that Col Schell was just finishing at the time of his death.

There are actually two books that have been done as an update to the original catalog. The one Col Schell did will probably be the first release. There is another one being done by Lt. Col Todd Engelman. Both are very good books and will make a great addition to a collectors library. There is also another one done by Lt. Col Perrenot that has a great deal of information I would suggest.

I think these reproduction pieces "hurt" the collector. One of the things that Bill prided himself on was "truly" representing CAP history. Fakes patches do not do that. In fact they dishonor the service of the people. The only reason people do that is for the money not to honor. The same thing goes with the fake "half obsrver" wings that are put out by USNUSA on ebay. They are fake and they are cheap.

I am currently working on a project for release sometime in the near future. It will have ALL of the collectors catalogs and maybe even some of the newer versions. It will also have all of the monographs such as the Air Medals and Music  Catalog. They will be available on CD from the Historical Foundation. It will also have a PDF version of the Flying Minute Men and several other items. This is going to be used as a fundraiser for the CAPHF.

I want to make CAP history available for our members.

[alamrcn]

I want to make CAP history available for our members.

:clap: The project sounds great, and I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Glad to hear Todd is still plugging away at his book, as well.

I didn't know of Lt Col Perrenot before his visual aids started appearing on eBay, and then he introduced himself here on CAPTalk last year in a thread about them. I hadn't considered in purchasing his work before, but now may since you have recommended it.

BTW, got an e-mail from Allan Pogorzelski last week! He was a member of the original National Historical Committee till it disbanded almost 20 years ago.

And back to the original subject...

I temporarily removed all the "Visitor Submissions" from the CAP Patches website. I hope to have thumbnails back up for them soon like the other insignia. Many of the recent batches of fakes were coming from there. I'm hypothesizing that Bob Lafond knew I was on eBay, and thought I'd buy them since I hadn't been able to preserve the real ones yet.

Hopefully the removal of the full size images from the CAP Patches website will slow him down. But with as much money as he's been making, I'm sure he'll be trolling unit websites and such for more patch images to replicate - possibly even Vanguard's website! I'm also still working on a "Replicas and Reproductions" page, so collectors can be aware of this huge influx of patches - he's made 115 in just two months to my count!

[SarDragon]

I have given some thought to recreating Maj. Regan's book, with real photos instead of the existing artwork. Getting all the pix together might be difficult, though, especially the older items.

[Майор Хаткевич]

Ace, in the last year or so eBay has significantly cut down on the "goon squad" that is the busting of illegitimate items. They WILL pick up on brand names (mostly those who have sued eBay for letting knockoffs on the site), as my fiancee tried to sell a bag that was from one company inspired by another's design (that's actually listed on the company's description of the item!), and only was there an automatic message asking me to be sure it was a legit item, it was pulled within an hour due to the name being high profile.

On the other hand, CAP Inc would probably have a lot more success in getting this removed. 

[flyboy53]

With the way they shut down the The Hock Shop, I wonder why nobody's gone after E-bay?

Bet you it's because they couldn't afford the legal fees.

[alamrcn]

I suppose CAP's corporate look on eBay is that it involves mostly resales or "second hand" sales. Something that does not infringe on their rights or Vanguard's exclusive dealings.

There is a seller on eBay (might be a member, don't know) that will buy the newest released CAP patches from Vanguard, and then sell them on eBay at about a 200-300% mark-up. And there are militaria collectors on eBay who that do pay it!

I supposed eBay is the NEW Hock Shop (see that thread), that National will just ignore for now.