Years ago we had a member who told us he had a really old HR but it was messed up.. He told me all about the ring. I had mentioned to him privately never to sell the ring no matter how hard things got. Pawn it, get a loan on it anything but don't sell. Well I guess it was tough for him but eventually he sold it and to all people,,,,,Mr.Craig Gottleib.
1st thing he does is,,goes about restoring the ring.. You see the ring had no skull! There was a real diamond where the skull used to be. I thought it looked cool!
Anyway here a photo and next I'll post his story:

from our own forum.. this is his story:

"The story of this ring begins in ww2 germany near a pow camp. the G.I who aquired it was a man named doc davies. he was an army doctor and officer. all i know is he got the ring near a pow camp.maybe regansburg who knows. he returned home after the war to continue practicing as a doctor and obtained his very own office. he was our family doctor for many many years and a very close friend of the family. he actualy delivered several of my sisters at our home. my mother was a nurse and at some point became his personal nurse rn practioner and worked for him. one day he came to the office very pissed off and handed the ring to my mother and asked if she wanted it. she accepted the ring as a friendly gesture and didnt understand why he was so mad. doc had taken the ring to his friend who was a jeweler and asked him to repair the ring because the skull was loose or comming off. well,the jeweler though he would surprise doc by removing the skull,drilling a setting and soldering a bezel on,and installing a diamond into it. side note: the diamond is a g-h color 35 or so pt vvs stone. so it was a very good stone. when doc went to get the ring he wasnt very happy. so he felt the ring was ruined and couldnt care less about it at that point. now,my mother takes the ring and puts it in a box in her belongings and forgets about it for 20-30 years or so. up until thew ring comes up in conversation between her and i. she discribes the ring but not in great detail. i ask that if it evers pops up could i have it. she says if she finds it its mine. 2 years or so go by and out of the blue she produces the ring. i knew it was an honor ring due to seeing one im one of my ss books. i am troubled though because it doesnt match any inscriptions i can find on the internet at the time. so,i contact don boyle and speek to him over the phone. as soon as i describe the way the inscription is written don became excited because at that time it wasnt well known aboth the roman numerals except by people who had seen original 33 rings. don made me a trade offer of a rare piece he had but i wasnt in the market to sell or trade at the time. i joined the gdc not long after and began to learn as much as possible about sshr's. i had a few offers over time and didnt want to sell. one was for around 12,000.00 to which i wish i had taken now. then a time came when hardship fell on my family to which i had to make a very hard decision. i made it known on the gdc that i was considering selling the ring".

Here is one of the last photos of the ring before it gets restored.. You can just see the diamond mounted in a triangle:

the real original owner Francis X. SCHWARZ.

Ring dated 24. XII. 1933

Him being the 'main money man' for the whole NSDAP I thought it fitting the skull was replaced with a diamond! I would have left it alone but,

So Craig decides to 'restore' the ring.. It got sold, not sure of original selling price, nor what Craig actually got for it but,,

SO, this is the restored ring and is now for sale for a price of 29 thousand euro!..29,999. euro!

IF, if I HAD to restore it I'd actually find a real beat up early pattern,,to a paperpusher or similar. Maybe even wait to find a damaged ring or with name taken out and I would have used a authentic skull.. But for me it should have been left alone..

SO,,is it worth that kind of money? Would you have restored it,,or left it as it was??

Left it alone. 36 thousand usd? No way man.

Definitely would have left it alone! Whatever the reason for the diamond, it was part of the history and now the history is lost.

At that time, there was still no cue, he could take my skull )))
Restoration, exists everywhere, but it is necessary to restore authenticly, and not as Gotlib did it ...