Mondvor

There are not only the variations "with patina" or "without patina". Veteran of Labor medal has more prominent variations on the obverse. If anyone interested I can post some comparative pictures at the evening to explain what I mean.

Alfred, that's exactly what I said to Order of Victory

You are right Dave! I learn something new every day. And mostly I learn it from other collectors. I believe that we can learn a lot from each other. Only through communication and sharing information we can resist to fake makers

Order of Victory, I have to fit the images to the forum size as well. But if you compare my images with yours you can say they are different About the ring on your order - if you can please post nice clear images of the ring itself. Here are the examples of soldered rings. Of course they would not be that evident. Fakemakers will mask them.

Obverse. BTW, I surprised why most of the pictures on the forum are so small, that details are almost invisible. Good scanner costs less than post-war Red Banner. But people still prefer to take the pictures with cell phones...

Here is the real order with close serial number.

OK, finally I have some time to spend with my favourite hobby Was busy almost whole day About this GPW. 1. The loop at the top of the upper ray is soldered to the order, but it should be a part of the order. 2. The edges of the enamel star's reverse should have gold-plating, but on your order they do not. 3. The center of the enamel star's reverse looks polished, rivets are flattened. It means the remnants of screwpost were removed. 4. And finally... Normally I do not tell any small secrets to people who I don't know really well. But in your case I'll make an exception. Take a look at the obverse. Find the word ОТЕЧЕСТВЕННОЙ, than find letter Й in this word. Do you see small dash at the top of the letter? All suspension GPW have this dash at the shape of round dot or very short horisontal line. If you see that this dot is triangle in shape (like on your order) it means that this belongs to late screwback order. So the enamel part of your order made out of GPW Type 2. Rayed star has smoothed, licked off surface with fake patina. This is very common in cast made specimens. Serial number looks ugly and unusual. It would be nice if you can place good scans. Those pictures are too small. Maybe I can find someting else.

And one more thing. As you can see, his orderbook for GPW was issued on April 1947. The medalbook was issued 8 month later - in December 1947. Now the question - why they didn't indicate both his medals in the orderbook, but instead they made separate book for the medals? Normally if a person got both orders and medals they all listed in the orderbook together. And also the medalbook number does not correspond with the date of issue. At the December of 1947 the Б series of medalbook was already in buisness. A 603362 corresponds more to the first part of 1947. By the way, on February 1945 Derbin already was at the rank of officer. I don't know when he got his officer rank, but from March 1944 (when the medals were issued) to Feruary 1945 (when he was a Lieutenant) passed less than one year. And he got two medals in 11 month! How lucky!!! But on March 1944 the medal was just issued. First documented event of Ushakov medal being awarded on the Black Sea was on April 20, 1944. So we have less than 10 month...

If you take a look at the medal book you can see that it lost color. Instead of being orange-red color it's almost white. Ink color in all notes looks very pale. It happends when fake makers dilute the ink. They think that notes written with diluted ink look old Next step. Lets take a look at the stamps "Медалью Ушакова" and "Медалью Нахимова". In real medalbooks Russians never used symbol " " in the stamps of those medals. Here is an example how does the real entry looks like.

Second page.

And this is Derbin's medal book. First page.

This is Derbin's orderbook. It's original and problems-free. Sorry for small pictures, that's all I have.

Yes, I do have orderbook scans. I'll post them at the evening (do not have an access to my files at the moment).

Sorry to tell you that, but this suspension GPW 2nd class is not real. I can explain this later (after I return back home from my job) with showing you some images as an example. Enamel part is made out of regular GPW type 2 and rayed part is made out of cast. Suspension probably is fake also but I can not say it for sure without looking at better images.

Dave, thanks a lot for posting the images. Very nice orders in perfect condition. And the group itself is just amazing. Current owner is really lucky guy!

Hi Dave, It would be great if you can post clear scans of Miroshnichenko's group that you mentioned above. The guy who was upset about enamel is really strange. He refused to buy historical group BTW, as far as I understand from the picture in the orderbook, at 1940 he was serving in Naval Air Force (probably Baltic or Black Sea Fleet Aviation). Is that true?

Hi Dave, Very nice groups indeed. But the one with both Ushakov 2266 and Nahimov 11857 (belonged to cmrd. Derbin) has a fake medalbook. Awards themselves are original, but the book is one of those washed-out specimens. So the medals are not his awards, he got only GPW 1 class. If you don't mind I can post the book here and explain why do I think so.

Hi Gerd, He was a fighter pilot, so he didn't fly IL-2. IL-2 is a ground-attack plane. While serving in 172 Fighter Regiment Kravtsov was flying Yak-1 (take a look at the picture.) But what did he fly during the war with Japan I don't know. Could be Yak-9, Yak-3, La-5 or La-7.

Finally I've got the last citation for this group - for GPW 2nd class. Here it is... Name: Kravtsov Dmitrij Afanasyevich Military Rank: Captain. Position: squadron commander, 14th Fighter Air Regiment, 296 Fighter Air Division, 10 Air Army, Far Eastern Front. Born: 1918, Zelenkovichi village, Mogilev Region Nationality: Belorus Party membership: Communist Party member since 1943 Participation in war: in Great Patriotic War since June 22, 1941 until July 1943 Wounds or contusions: none In Red Army: since January 5, 1939 In the rank of officer: since November 19, 1940 Short description of merits: During the war with Japan comrade Kravtsov displayed himself as a brave fighter pilot and skillful commander of his squadron. The planes of his unit tactically very well organized in every air mission. He personally performed 8 operational sorties (2 of them for air reconnaissance, 2 for ground attacks and 4 for supporting our ground troops). During ground attacks he personally destroyed 2 trucks with ammunition and up to 25 enemy soldiers. His squadron performed 71 successful military sorties in which it destroyed 11 trucks with troops and ammunition, 1 locomotive, some train cars and up to 150 enemy soldiers. All those results were proved by our infantry units and aerial photography. He deserves state award - Order of Patriotic War 1st class. Commander of 14th Fighter Air Regiment Major Medved.

Nice Rick, it looks like it has silver screwplate.

This one has s/n 75157 - mintmark curved up.

Finally I came back home... As I promised more pictures of GPW in 70.XXX serial number range. This one has s/n 78505 - mintmark curved down.

Doc, those GPW have both curved up and curved down mintmarks as well as the straight ones. There is no distinct correlation. I can place the pictures of curved up and down mintmarks of 70.XXX range orders in the evening (I'm on my job now).

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