Mondvor

Dave, I have images of several documents for 3rd class "crab" with s/n above 70.000. I believe that they are original. If you are interested I can post the pictures.

Sure it is!!! Do you plan a research?

Nice order Gerd, my congrats!!!

Thanks a million Dave! I believe that many forum members would be happy to see this card. And this little trick with watermark on the image is really good solution to protect your copyright from all sorts of crooks. So what did we learn from this? I guess that from now all "crabs" with 106.XXX serial numbers could be considered as "possibly issued".

Ed, of course Dave made a good point. But I thought that we are all trying to find a truth here. If Dave said "A" I was expecting to hear "B". Dave, I understand that you paid your own money for research. But this picture came from Russian collector some years ago. There is a very small chance that the person who currently owns this order can visit this forum and steal your research. But other fellow forum members would definetely appreciate your information about highest issued number. At least you can post second page only, so there would be no important information shown

Great job, Dave! Can you post the images of this award card? Still I have to say that those cases of orders above 100.000 being issued is more like an exception, not a rule. Maybe few numbers were sent to some remote Military District and only few of them were actually awarded.

Thanks for info, Dima! I found some more information about this unit. On March 2003 military helicopter Ka-27PS that was assigned to this unit took off from the major anti-submarine ship "Admiral Tributs". Few seconds after take-off helicopter crashed into the sea and 4 crew members were killed (including Lt.Colonel Topirichev). Here is a link to this article http://www.vladnews.ru/magazin.php?id=12&a...nt_magazin=1553 It is in Russian but it has a picture of Lt.Colonel Topirichev and a picture of a monument to helicopter's crew.

And finally the award card. I want to say "THANKS A LOT" to Dave (NavyFCO) for his help in getting this award card

Orderbook.

Reverse.

This is my 3rd class "crab". Obverse.

Your 95148 looks good!

Dave, you are right! But because of some weird reason people like us prefer to buy odd-looking silver items instead of diamonds If I only have some spare money.... But I think my wife would not understand me...

Beautiful order indeed! The next owner would add a real diamond to his collection...

Thank you!

You are wellcome By the way, it Sadasuk's orderbook what is the number of GPW - is that 343087 or 343887? It's not clear on the picture.

Those three orderbooks issued to Sidorov, Varavva and Sadasyk are original in every respect. Ink color and handwriting style are the same on both pages. If you have all items from Sidorov's group I would say it is amazing group and you are lucky to have it.

Many thanks for the orderbooks pictures.

Here it is

First three orderbooks are OK for me, didn't find anything suspicious. The fourth orderbook for Krilov has fake entry about Ushakov medal as well as fake picture and seal. It would be great if you can post first pages (with recipients names) of three first orderbooks. Andrew.

Very interesting mintmark, thanks Gerd. One letter is missing. Most likely the die got worn-off. Actually there are lots of funny cases with those mintmarks. If you interested I can post some awkward variations of GPW mintmarks, for example upside-down rotation or mirror-reflected position. About the suspension GPWs I can say that I remember old good times when they cost almost nothing. I bought my one together with the orderbook for only 90 USD. It was in Kiev in 2001 and the order was in very good condition. I would like to have a time-machime

Thanks Gerd! Three of those GPWs belong to the same variation.

Gerd, it's better to turn all of them over and make another shot

Rick, of course for a collector who had seen real "mirror reverses" before it would not be a problem to uncover the fakes displayed above. But there are two important points. First point - until recently there were no attempts to fake this type of order. So this is a first bell. Second point - obverse was made pretty good. So it's only a question of time for "bad guys" to improve the quality of reverse. Just remember how it started with HSU medals. First fakes were ugly. Recent ones are masterpieces...

Reverse.