saschaw

You don't have the ebay number or link anymore, by coincidence?

If award type, this medal was made from magnetic steel, yes.

Do you mean this one? http://www.medals.pl/de/de3.htm

I don't find anything unusual or special about it. Possibly an early one, in finer silver than the later issues. Very similar to Württemberg, Hessen - from what I know - never changed to silvered brass or such. They issued "real" silver medals until the end, but purity went down and down, finally ro something like 250/000...

Nice and unusual combination. You won't find the Prussian merit cross in military groups often, as most of them went to railraod officials.

I haven't seen any good fakes of these yet, and assume Brian's explanation might well explain the situation.

I feared so... thanks a lot for clarification, I sent it back today! Maybe I just shouldn't touch Imperial Russian, unaware as I am.

That must be a very long list. He didn't have just one medal bar, but several different ones. Depending on which era the photo was taken, or depending on what uniform he wore, the awards changed E. g. on a British uniform he wore other awards than on a Spanish, or Austrian one... not only in regards to neck crosses and breast stars, but also to medal bars!

For field made Iron Crosses, EK2 were used - in general those handy. That might also have been an oversized crosses - but not necessarily. Anyone who is in the need of a nice example might check my shop, I'm having one offered at the moment.

I couldn't agree more, thanks for your clear words!

Sorry to diagree, but, as yet pointed out, it's not a WW1 era cross, but a later replacement. Be it from the 1930s/40s or even 1950s/60s I cannot tell. I don't think this changes much anyway. They're worth being collected, sometimes even more popular than their contemporary counterparts.

Ha, seems I wasn't the only one to be left speechless! That must be something incredble rare, I guess? Thanks for showing!

Sorry to disagree, but the case looks to me as bad as the cross does. Definitely nothing I'd touch... I'm also having some in stock, just if interested.

I cannot name the maker, but I think I've seen this mark before on a German WW1 award. However, the mention German award was a recent fake. I hope your TWM isn't one, too, but that's what I suspect, to be honest...

Is it made from steel? It should so, if it's an awarded one. If it isn't, it's a wearers copy at the best. Hard to distunguish the latter from collectors copies and outright fakes...