new world

Marie, Queen of Rumania (left), Joe Boyle (centre) and Ileana, Princess of Rumania (right), summer 1918, Bicaz, Rumania.

This is scarce medal, only 5,000 awarded around 1878 and not that many survived.

Medal looks like WWI manufacture. Here's same award with ribbon and case. Just because it came with German awards from WWII period doesn't mean it's made during Tsar Boris time. It could have been awarded to a German during, it was common practice.

Yes, it had the box, larger than normal size. Here's mine in the case

Super award for very low price!

Great portrait!

This award is quite rare in third class. It is 1941 version, specially created when Bulgaria got involved in WW2. As Bulgarian army rarery saw combat during WW2 - the awardings to Bulgarians were few. Good amount of these awards went to the ally Germany, you can find some 4th classes and Soldier grade awards to Germans. It's unknown how many were awarded. There are no centralized lists in existance, perhaps there were some, but likely didn't survive the war and several regime changes in Bulgaria.

These croses from Boris period were made in Germany and before end of WWI in Austria.

boonchinheng, Your cross looks normal, I don't see any warning signs.

Wow, what a guy! Amazing citation as well!!!

To add to what Graf said - I've noticed fakes of high Bulgarian awards started appearing on the market around 2007. Most of them were offered by a dealer from Bulgaria named Victor. Over the last few years he's been operating on eBay under several names, currently he sells under account "kaissa64". His tactic is to operate under one name for some time, then close the store and open under different name. Apparently because of the buyers discovering that he sells fakes and probably of complaints they file with eBay.

Yes, that's the bad dealer mentioned earlier. His "diamond" awards are bogus, recently made, most likely stones are not real. His award boxes are newly made.

I know the guy. If 2nd class is coming from him then I would stay away from it. I bought few items from him, most were junk with some original parts, but with added newly made parts, as well as with new soft enamels. In best case you will get franken awards, with parts from several different awards, or damaged/repaired items. I sent back most of items I bought from him, there was only one I kept.

My star is 92mm. I think I know which star you are referring to, I saw it and there were some questions... It looked more like modified 2nd class star.

Nice set! I guess we will never know when the modifications to the cross were done. I've seen some official modifications - when swords were removed. You can see example of such change in my post #29 in this same thread with green St Alexander 1 class: the swords on top were removed from the star, remains of the place where swords were attached is visible.

Here's my massive breast star for Grand Cross grade of St Alexander with swords in the middle. Very rare award from Balkan Wars and WWI period, only few were awarded to high-ranking Generals for merits during war.

Congratulations! Order with lilly is very rare!

Do you guys think this star is real?

measures 10 cm x 8.6 cm.

reverse

How about this star? Is it real?

Very nice and rare set! I especially like miniature.

That's more that I wanted to spend on this curiosity. :)

I think that's most likely case, private make. Is it for sale? How much? I would definitely buy it, that's unusual award.

I checked both Pavlov and Petrov books - this cross is not pictured in either one.