saschaw

I'm not too much into those battle clasps, but the Godet quality and the fact this is a full display set redeems everything! An absolutely amazing piece, without exaggeration of museum quality. Thanks for sharing, saxcob!

I'm surprised, very surprised by those prices and only paid a fraction for mine, but in my eyes, this is the classical EK reference. It's true the picture quality is obviously 1980s standard, but the shown pieces... I do not know another EK book that doesn't show any (zero!) bullshit crosses. Seems the book became a collectible itself, as do many good, old books when they are out of print. To be honest, this one and Wernitz' 2013 work are the only (printed) references I'm frequently using on Prussian EKs!

From my limited understanding, breast stars are actually the same for both 1st and 2nd class of the order, so this would be a 2nd class set. Also, I think it wouldn't make too much sense if he would wear two different classes at once?!

All could agree upon this group is to a senior NCO, so it has to be with swords. As pointed out earlier in this thread, military personal received this cross always with swords, regardless their actual combatant status, while the other type went to civilians. This does not convince me. The majority of Baden merit medals to Württemberg NCOs and EMs (see Bretzendorfer, pages 26/27) went to the Strasbourg based IR 126, whose "Chef" the Baden Grand Dukes were - but a Württemberg soldier in an Alsace based unit would also receive the Centennial medal! Thus, the latter seems more like

Finally, I could offer such a cross in my latest update as well, but unfortunately (just for you, not for me), it's already sold. Here's the pictures, for your further reference:

That would be Baden's Felddienstauszeichnung with a metal bow ("Metallschleife") for the 1870 campaign against France. For how the medal and the metal bows looked like, please see here.

Back to the two Grand Cross EKs sold by Thies in his September 2019 sale: Both were award types, but without a known provenience, and the 1870 cross sold for EUR 36,000 while the 1914 cross stuck at EUR 31,000 - each plus 25% fees.

For future references, the cross sold at EUR 11,500 plus fees - definitely not a bargain, but, I'd suggest, well worth the money. Chances are this will be the only authentic, early cross with provenience to appear in an auction for many, many years.

The only actually suprising thing here to me is how incredibly cheap fake badges can be produced and obtained nowadays, somewhere in the world...

Our forum, with all its older entries, is such a wealthy treasure of information. Browsing old threads, I actually found an authentic reduced size Turkish war medal! It has been shown by our dear member Avşar İbar more than twelve years ago. No wonder I couldn't remember ever seeing one...

If only he wore his medal bar or ribbons... this is the Wiegrebe group, that I sold close to two years ago. It came directly from his son's collection, and was auctioned at Künker's. Unattributed, however.

More than ten years later, I think the only thing that's missing here might be a nice portraiture?! Gentlemen, please welcome Oberstleutnant Christian Gockel, naturally or unfortunately with his full size medal bar, and not just the ribbons. The picture is taken from Henning Volle's 2019 Die Orden und tragbaren Ehrenzeichen des Großherzogtums und der Republik Baden, where it's used to show medals bars in wear and their precedences.

A great idea and so well executed, thanks Alex! It's good to see I'm not the only one to miss the old days of GMIC... For those of us who have lost their track of time, as I often feel I have: Today, it has been seven years since Rick's untimely loss. He still is and will always be missed as a major part of our community that is, in so many regards, what he (with others, of course) developed it to be.

Lifesaving medals are something really special and among, if not the most distinctive awards - each medal a life saved from greatest danger... you cannot say the same about many other awards! So, despite we have already seen a Bavarian here some thirteen years ago, I'm bumping this thread up with another one, single mounted, that will be in my shop's update tomorrow. Looking their history up, I noticed two things that are most unusual and worth mentioning: Despite their monarchistic design, these were handed out until the early 30s, when they were superseded by a very short lived and

Thanks for the additional pictures, PREM. I agree both our stars are the same variation. I could find one more of these on ebay, sold some weeks ago by cph70. This is one of the well known sellers of dubious pieces. In fact, I have never seen any of their auctions that I felt comfortable with. And this is just one of dozens(!) similar German ebay sellers.