Greetings gentlemen,
My contribution to this old thread and my first comment . . .
Started collecting back in 1990, so barely made it before the breakup of the USSR. First purchase was a Capture of Berlin medal bought in Berlin. I knew Dietrich Herfurth in Berlin back in the early 1990s. Provided the Type 2 Red Star ("Mondvor") example for his second book. His original book led me astray in my reconstituting my Type 1 XX Year Red Army medal, since he made no distinction between the original suspension and that of the other pre-1943 military suspensions . . . had I known otherwise . . .
It was really kinda "wild west" back then. We had little to go by and in terms of reference material and both dealers and collectors traded information freely, at least in Berlin. Had I known what I know now I would have bought every XX Year Red Army that came my way, but can't complain, really. I remember that the first Partisan 1st Class medals we saw were almost exclusively fakes, not that we knew that at the time. That is it must have been one of the most faked medals in Soviet times.