CRBeery

I found these in a box as I was trying again to get organized. I have a feeling these are parts bars as there are no two ribbons the same. Am I correct and do these have any value at all?

It has been pretty quiet lately. I thought since we are all saving our money for presents and not buying much rare or expensive stuff we could have a common stuff thread. I have a nice item in the works but until then:

A medal bar that nearly matches this ribbon bar is owned by Marc Garlasco/Flak88. The only difference is that his has the 1870/71 KDM with a few bars on it. It is very nice! I was assuming this is the 1914 EK2 as there is no KDM on the bar.

I would love to see the medal bar to go with it - there would be some nice enamel especially on the end! There is one bow like this posted in new ribbon bar article by Rick and the bar was owned by a member here. I was surprised to find something like this. The price was very reasonable.

The last one. A little odd on the order but I liked it enough to buy it.

The device.

A little Finnish.

The bow. The bow holder looks like the same one in the ribbon bar article.

I have not been buying many ribbon bars lately but I found three that were interesting. The first one I am not 100% sure on. It is UV negative and well made but rare stuff attracts the fakers.

Tom, Thanks for those photos! The hardware is an exact match right down to the off center nut.

This is one piece construction and nonmagnetic.

I have looked under magnification and I do not see a seam where two pieces were joined. I will look again. The odd thing is that the metal showing through looks darker in color that the brass on the cross. I just assumed there was some sort of plating left. The hardware that Eric posted is an exact match. Nice piece by the way! I realize that these could be later pieces and if they are 57 era pieces I would expect to see them for sale into the 60's. I would ask that anyone that has a Sedlatzek marked item to please post it as I have seen several different marks and maybe there is another clue there.

Now, there is no picture of the back of the cross in the catalog to see if it is one or two pieces. I feel that one piece crosses were being manufactured during the TR period and that this is one of them. I will be interested to see if anyone has a grouping with one in it to see how the crosses compare. I do agree that there are versions of this with the 1957 style pins and I would not buy one of those - or did I?

I love the wear and the look of this piece. I do not really have an interest in pieces that are younger than I am so I dug a bit more to see what I could find on Sedlatzek. It is generally agreed that he was a retailer and did not make awards. While looking around I found a Spanish Cross that had his name on it and it was made by S&L. I went and looked at my copy of the S&L catalog from 1939 and found this:

The back. There is a small nut soldered into the larger one that is visible here. That is why the post is not centered in the hole.

I recently added this to my little collection and while researching it further it seems this will be hard to assign to any decade. This is a one piece cross and it has the fleur de lis shape that is associated with 57 pieces.

Thanks mate! That is all I need to be convinced. Next time we see each other I will buy the first beverage. The same for the rest of you! :cheers:

Gentlemen, First of all I thank you all for the discussion on this bar - I learned a few things which is why I am here. I have been thinking about this and one point by Wild Card seemed to me very interesting, the amount of ribbon above each medal matches the medal width. While looking at this I noticed something odd. The black stripe is very narrow. I measured four mounted NC EK2's and two had 4.5mm black stripes and two had 5mm black stripes. The black stripe on the ribbon over the KvM is 4mm or maybe a bit under. With the few of these awards that would have been awarded is there a chance someone made a different ribbon with a thinner stripe? Please measure the stripes on your mounted NC EK2's and see what you get. I looked in the few books that I have and found no reference to widths other than overall ribbon width. Maybe with this effort we can learn something else.

Don't think I did not consider the EK2, and we all know without a photo or the documents there will never be 100% proof. I looked at the medals and the wear matches. The LS looks like it was gilted on the front and nearly normal on the reverse. The KvM is near perfect on the front and shows a little wear to the backside. They match in condition. I do not think a dealer would take an EK2 off of a bar and replace it with the KvM (which I say is real) and then mark it up for profit and sell it to me for $90. It makes more sense that he simply got this in a batch of medals and sold it on not knowing or caring what he had. He did not even spend enough time on it to get the LS years right. Now if this were on a dealers page that worked with Imperial items for $400 I would be more skeptical. Maybe I am foolish. For the price I could not lose and I really do believe that this is the way the bar was made. The pin no longer opens so I am leaving it this way and I will treasure it even if you do not like it. This time I have faith. Here is the old thread with the photo Rick mentioned: http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=18786&view=&hl=krieger&fromsearch=1

With the sheer number of Imperial awards I can understand missing that one, but like you I found the number thing quite funny. I am pretty sure Roman numerals have not changed for a while not even under the "new math" program. :speechless:

The back.

When I saw it and realized what I was looking at I almost fell over! This is the ONLY NC KvM I have ever seen mounted. I found one picture posted here but that is it. To say I am happy is an understatement.

I found this at a nice little show yesterday in a TR dealers case! I think this counts as rare and then some. First, here is what he thought it was: :shame:

You can also search through these pages using the search function. Are these what you are looking for? It seems to be pretty inclusive for photos. CRBeery http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=9273

Do you think these two ever met? My century medal looks out of place compared to the printzen one. Very nice bar you have!