Wolseley1868

One thing I have noticed about the K to K fakes is that the hollow on the back of the medal is very scrappy and uneven looking.

22 hours ago, peter monahan said:

1) Read, read and read some more!  Look out all the sites which identify the 'fake' marks/errors on the commonly faked medals.  Buy books on the subject if they exist.  It will save you a lot of grief and money in the long run.

2) Examine real medals, in museums, collections or at shows.  Other collectors will be more than happy, generally speaking, to help you learn and there is simply no substitute for handling multiple examples of the real thing to 'tune' one's knowledge.  

3) The Kandahar Star is one of the 19th century medals which is faked, due to its rarity and the campaign and actions it represents.  OTOH, most IGSMs are still not so valuable that faking them is worth the bother, I don't believe.  Of course 'improving' a medal with extar bars is and was done.  I once collected IGSMs to Indian troops and almost all the multi-bar medlas had had bars added locally by regiment or indidivdual soldiers, with all sorts of odd rivets, wires and so on.  Collecting to British troops should mostly obviate that issue but again, knowing what is out there is key.  Did the Sussex Reg't issue  650 bars for 'Afgahnistan 1919', making them common and likely pukka or not?  If it's too good to be true, it's likely false!

4) Ask around before you buy.  Good dealers will always take back a medal if you're not satisfied and some dealers are known for their honesty!

Good luck!  I hope you enjoy many happy years of collecting!  

Thanks very much for your advice and  kind words. The trouble is all the books I have including British Battles and Medals by Spink have lousy photos of the medals so they are pretty useless as a way of trying to spot the fake. Clearly fakers make more from faking rare medals, but that does not seem to stop them faking the common ones. I bought a fake RAF lsgc medal few years ago for £35, they will fake anything.

Many IGSMs are worth more than the K to K star and I read somewhere that the original die for the IGSM has been used in replicas. I have an IGSM I bought from one well known dealer that I am not at all sure about but cannot say for definite whether it is the real Maccoy or not. It has a slight dotting on it and the edge does not look quite right, it is not as sharp as I think it should be. Sadly I don't have access to a camera right now so I cant put up a photo of it and ask for opinions. The other thing is I already have a K K star and I still couldn't see anything wrong with the one to Jas Clarke. I bought it from a well known dealer who seems to have new stars coming in all the time, suspicious? I wonder how many of these stars were issued to British troops, not many I should think.

I'll continue to collect but now that I have all the most important medals from 1854 I will have to be very careful what I buy and only from Dixons from now on. I cannot risk spending say £hundreds on fakes.

Hello,

I have just joined this very interesting website. I have only been collecting for a few years but I have quite a nice little collection now covering the period from the Crimean to the Korean wars. I find  Victorian military history fascinating and  eventually  hope to have a collection with a medal for every campaign. I like the fact that you can study the battles and the history of the particular recipient as well in most cases.

However I am very concerned about buying fakes. Earlier this week I googled 1643 Jas Clarke during an idle moment and found this link here on GMIC which indicates that the medal is a fake, I breathed a sigh of relief because the day before (8th October 2017) the same but complete star sold on Ebay for about £60. I had been seriously thinking about putting a high bid in and was at first annoyed with myself for not doing so. The listing photos were pretty good and the star looked correct. Further google hits show it as sold on at least two other auction house sites and I believe I've seen it on one of the bigger militaria shops in the country.

There seem to be a lot of very good fakes out there. I had thought it was just the Air Crew Europe star but I am doubting my ability to spot a fake IGSM now. At least with the ACE star there are clear ways of checking it - the position of the "v" in relation to the "w", but I was wondering are there any similar ways of checking other medals as to whether or not they are fakes? Any advice would be appreciated.