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    GeroiCCCP

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    1. Nice example! Thank you! I have photo evidence for the existence of 14 Goldheads, but I have never seen this 16X8 before! Yes, you are absolutely correct. The Goldhead Lenins suffered from poor quality due to very thin plating of silver on the Lenin bust which rubbed off...and poor quality of the enamel which caused it to crack and flake off. A fake Goldhead Lenin sold 2 weeks ago on eBay and the seller was in Ukraine...the poor guy won it at $4400. What an expensive lesson! Probably when the buyer finds out that he was conned, you will see it back on ebay. What would be very interesting is the person who won the award, and his/her fate. Many died in the purges. (467, 788, 884, 900,1110, 1166, 1194, 1209, 1290, 1296, 1342, 1345, 1139, and 2399).
    2. Like a budget conscious seasoned traveler, bad habits are hard to break. If I had to choose to between a Hilton or a budget hotel, I always picked the budget. You can always tell a budget hotel because they always have digits after their names (Motel 6, California 8, Sleazy 8, Crazy 8, etc., or the name Budget or Economy as in Budget Inn or Economy Inn)...always next to the busy highway offramp. I refuse to stay at motels which posts hourly rates! (I have minimum standards). But when I got to Halgol in the vicinity of Khalkin Gol, it was an entirely different story!!! There were only 2 "hotels" in town...and we had stayed at this one hotel years prior, which was OK. The only problem was, the toilet was an outhouse outside the building in the middle of a dirt lot! And it was padlocked. If you were staying there as a guest, you got a key! So the next time around, we decided to stay at the museum/hotel in town. It is a decent museum, housing mostly Khalkin Gol battlefield artifacts. We booked a room and I thought everything was cool until that night. It had a very high ceiling. We turned off the lights and tried to get some sleep until...I felt something crawling up my leg! Yikes! I threw off the covers, cursed, and turned on the lights. There were these tiny black beetles in my bed!!! Then my buddy woke up, he felt something in his bed, too! We took off the thin blankets and brushed off the bugs and turned in. A few minutes later, I felt something on my face!!! I bolted out of bed and turned on the lights. I got quite a shock. There were bugs on the floor and on the blankets! Then I looked up at the ceiling...there were zillions of tiny black beatles all over the ceiling, and they were dropping off and hitting the floor with a thunk! I put on my jeans, long sleeved shirt, and covered my face with an old T-shirt, and tried to get some sleep, but they were crawling up my arms! They didn't bite, but it is unnerving to have creepy crawlies crawling up your face in the middle of the night!!! The two of us were pissed, tired, and exasperated!!! Finally, my buddy Justin came up with a great idea. We got a plastic bucket, put some water in it, and then I got my keychain flashlight and switched it on. Then we got into bed. We figured that the light would draw the buggers away from us, fall into the bucket, and drown themselves! After another hour, we simply were exhausted and fell asleep. When we awoke, the plastic bucket had a lot of dead bugs. They were the ones which fell from the ceiling!!! We complained to our Mongolian guide about our most horrible experience, and he agreed. He said, "All the insect eggs must have hatched that night! (it had been a very hot summer night). The hotel's bathroom was out of order...it was dark, wet, and stank! Their toilet was leaking and couldn't be flushed. It was sooooooooo GROSS, it was enough to gag a maggot!!! The hotel provided an outhouse. You didn't dare loose your balance while squatting, otherwise, you'd loose your wallet or worse! After coming out, it was wonderful to breathe fresh air! We went to the kitchen where some Mongolians were cooking breakfast over a wood burning stove. If they were burning wood, why was the kitchen full of BLACK GREASY smoke? The guests had scrummaged around and found a stack of old painted fence boards...painted with oil based paint (which probably had lead in it). I got the hell out of the kitchen!!! Now that we had experieced the "hotel from hell," we can sleep anywhere!!! Photo of the hotel, then our room. The plastic bucket in the corner filled with water and the dead bugs found in the morning.The last photo shows me and my buddy Justin holding a replica of the Soviet flag of Victory at Khalkin Gol. I had purchased it off of eBay and brought it to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the Khalkin Gol Battle.
    3. I've always been fascinated with Mongolia and the Khalkin Gol Campaign. Many years ago, I had a chance to get out to Khalkin Gol. Along the way, we stopped off at TAMSAG BULAG (sometimes spelled Tamsak Bulak). I just had to go there...because I just loved the name! I used to tell my wife: "One of these days, I have to go visit Tamsag Bulag!" This place was once a giant Soviet airfield and military staging area to fight the Japanese forces at Khalkin Gol. I was expecting to see an old airfield, aircraft relics, etc. When we got there, my reaction was: "WTF...!" There was absolutely nothing there but a few broken down buildings and absolutely no trees nor bushes!!! Sorry, but no 7-11 and no Starbucks! It had a population of 5 (a yurt with a Mongolian shepherd family) with a flock of goats, sheep, horses, and a camel. The Japanese bombed the base and there were vicious dogfights overhead. So I had my photo taken there, just to show my wife that I was at the ends of the earth. My buddy and I joked about making a T-shirt which reads: "I'VE BEEN TO TAMSAG BULAG, HAVE YOU?" And now that I've been there and showed you the photos, you don't have to make the grueling journey! Saved you time and money. I appreciated Bob sharing his photos of Lake Khasan, which was on my bucket list. Thanks to him, I don't have to go there now! He's saved me thousands of dollars!!!
    4. This is a very interesting set. Notice that the medals are numbered 2270 and 2279. The medals are only 9 numbers apart! № 2270 belonged to a Soviet fighter ace named Shalva Kiriya who shot down 28 enemy planes. № 2279 belonged to Major Pavel Bilanov, an Ossetian, who took his infantry unit and crossed the Dniester, and established a bridgehead. The owner of this set told me that there is a collector here in the US who owns № 2277. It was quite a thrill to see something like this!!!
    5. I visited a collector/friend recently and he showed me a Type 1 HSU #15X. When I researched this, I found out that it had been awarded to a fighter pilot during the Khalkin-Gol Campaign in August 1939. I have a Type 1 #2XX. Have any of you seen any Type 1s below #150??? What would something like that be worth? My friend wouldn't tell me what he paid for his nor when and how he acquired it.
    6. I acquired this small booklet a while ago. It belonged to Maguba Syrtlanova, one of the famous "Night Witches" and a Heroine of the Soviet Union. She died in 1971.
    7. Found that old 1967 Ken Lane catalog. Ken Lane sent me this EKI and for 45 years, I have wondered if it is original or not. There are no markings on the back.
    8. This Goldhead Lenin was sold recently. I have never seen anything so beautiful!!! It came with a booklet, too!!! I've heard that the Lenin bust was originally silver-plated over the gold, but all the photos I have seen of these medals shows a gold Lenin bust. Perhaps it was a very thin plating of silver which rubbed off. From what I read from the materials provided by Mr. Rocketscientist, the quality of the order was very bad (bad enameling).
    9. Thank you Gunner1! I found a copy at abebooks.com a couple of hours ago.
    10. WOW!!!!! Thank you very much, Mr. Rocketscientist!!!!!!!!!!! I can read some Russian. This will be absolutely helpful!!!!
    11. Does anyone have any detailed information on the Type 2, "Goldhead" Order of Lenin? Back in 2013, the NY Sale was auctioning a Goldhead Lenin #1166, but it was way way beyond my reach. Although I would never be able to acquire one, there is nothing stopping me from studying its history. #1166 sold for $22,500!!! NJ dealer Igor M. recently sold one, #788; and in 1997, NY dealer Dmitri Markov sold #1209 in 1997. I know they are extremely rare and I'm trying to ascertain how many have been marketed in the past years here in the US. Igor had another Goldhead which he sold about 10 years ago and I failed to record the serial number. Paul McDaniel's book has a short description and a great photo of one, but someone told me that there is a Russian author named DUROV who published a book solely on the history of the Order of Lenin. Where can I find this book? Thank you very much!!!
    12. I've been collecting for a number of years, but I am ALWAYS learning from fellow collectors! Red Banner No.5 is a fake, with a PMD certificate! Wow! I appreciate everyone's kind response!!! You are indeed, real gentleman!!! Thank you very very much!!!
    13. Back in the mid 1960s, when I was a teen, I used to save up some money by doing neighborhood lawn mowing jobs, then send away for various Nazi medals from KEN LANE, who operated out of Austria. I knew nothing about "restrikes" back then, and I was just thrilled to get my hands on a "genuine" Iron Cross 1st and 2nd classes, and a Knights Cross!!! It wasn't until a decade later that I learned about restrikes and fakes. I used to sell items for Ken...he'd send me a bunch of medals, I would sell some in the SHOTGUN NEWS classified... or he would tell me to send this and that to a customer here, and as my reward, I got to keep a medal for my time and postage. He is now deceased and I never knew him personally. I heard rumors that he was a retired Colonel in the Army, and after WWII, decided to stay there. In one of his medals catalog, he claimed that he single-handedly captured a Nazi depot, and that all his stuff came from this depot. It sounded great at the time. He certainly had a great sense of humor. Does anyone know when he passed away and where he is buried? A very interesting guy! I still have some of his letters. He used the same old typewriter, and he is the only guy I ever knew who could write so much on a tiny piece of paper! I still have his old catalog. Grand Cross, $24. Knight's Cross, $12. With Oakleaves, $13.50. With Swords, $14.50. With With Sapphires, $78.
    14. Thank you gentlemen! I don't have any questionable medals at this time. I was out of this hobby for a long time and wanted to know how bad it has gotten since I left. I think I'll sit it out for a while and just study the ones I have now.
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