Here is Eric's reply to us. In this letter he is addressing Michael Brodhead (his co-worker at Office of History) and myself.
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Marion & Mike,
Attached is an image of the DUI of the 81st Engineer Battalion that we have
in the museum collection. As I mentioned in the earlier email, this is a
reproduction, and I have found no outside confirmation that this is correct
design.
A bit of background is in order. I am not intimately familiar with the ins
and outs of DUI collecting, but I do know that one guy named Charles Aresta
makes reproductions for collectors and others. They are not deceptive in any
way - he marks them with his name - so everyone knows they are not original.
The reason people acquire Aresta's DUIs are to 'stand in' for extremely rare
originals - in other words, a collector may buy an Aresta DUI to fill the
space in his collection that would be otherwise be empty due to the scarcity
of the original. The man who donated the DUIs we have was a big enthusiast
of Aresta's stuff to fill his 'blank' spaces, so we have a lot of them.
Needless to say, Aresta is highly controversial in the collector community.
To my knowledge, every Aresta insignia is accurate in terms of design, color,
etc., just not original. In other words, I have never heard of Aresta making
up a design on his own. On the other hand, I could not prove that he hasn't
made up one either - all the other Aresta's DUIs I have seen have been
confirmed in design and color by other references.
So I am passing the image along with the above caveats. Let me know if I can
answer any other questions.
-Eric
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With that in mind, I am attaching said image.
