Rhodesia made more para jumps into combat than the entire worlds paratroopers in history. The wings are of high quality and are in demand by the collecting fraternity. They therefore command reasonable dollars and some like issued Selous Scouts wings can fetch crazy amounts so it would be wise to tell which ones are genuine or haven’t been tampered with.
This wing is not shown here because it’s a fake. I don’t know if it is genuine or not. What I do know is that there is no factual evidence to prove that it is genuine or was worn by Rhodesians in the units the seller has said it was worn.
There is also no evidence to prove that nine feathered wings or SAS wings in World War Two were made for Rhodesians or worn by them.
Originally this was listed for the price of £1200 (AUD$2238) by chairborne_militaria (aka Jack Dutton Roberts aka Jack Richmond Valentine). After it didn’t sell it was substantially reduced to £600 (AU$1,170).
The first picture is what Jack states about Chairborne Militaria. The rest are the conversations we had on my Instagram page when I showed this listing and commented on it.
It’s also where he threatens me with defamation.
He had also said that he was going to put “some of the best provenance that I’ve ever seen” on the listing. I never saw that.
Both of these wings were sown on genuine Rhodesian mess dress uniforms. The Rhodesian Army never had mess dress wings.
These mess dress wings would have been bought or brought from the UK by officers.
The only regiment that had mess dress paratrooper wings was the SAS.