Steiner

BTW this should be Great Grandfater's medals not Grandfather,s in the title. I am not that old!

When I was a boy growing up in New Brunswick around age 5 I used to go down in our basement and would play with my Great Grandfather's and Grandfather's war medals. No one in my family cared much about military service so the medals were just left there.

One day about 33 years later I asked my father what had happened to the medals. He said he had sold them around 1973 to his boss, a coin collector. I was a little sad that I would never get them back but my wife encouraged me to look up my father's boss.

He had died but I contacted his son and asked if he still had the collection. He said he would check it out and get back in touch. Sure enough he had them and returned them to me.

The next part of the story focuses on my Great Grandfather who fought in WW1 and whose medals were marked. First thing I did was get his attestation papers and found that he had also served in the East Yorkshire Regiment.

That is about how far I got for about 1 ? not sure of were to go next. Unfortunately my mother passed away in January of 2006. Later in the year about July I started to go through her paper work. Next thing I knew I was staring at my Great Grandfather's discharge papers from the East Yorkshire.

He served as a private from Oct 11 1892 till Oct 10 1904 completing 12 years service with 8 years and 154 days abroad! He was awarded also the Queen's South African medal along with the Orange Free State bar and the 1902 bar. His s/n was 3909. I do not have this medal but the hunt still goes on.

Since Great Granddad passed away before my birth I had no picture of him and had no idea what he looked like.

Back to Mom's paper work. I did find a picture of some veterans on parade in the pile of old photo's from the 30's. This was taken a distance and hard to see. I popped in my scanner and jacked up the rez. This was only one man in the picture with 4 medals on his breast and the picture was centered on him. Well there he is wearing a medal before his WW1 grouping which looked like a QSA.

I am quite happy. I few years ago I had nothing from him but through hard work and luck I was able to piece together a few things from his service.

Below are the things I have been able to collect.

Nice stuff I always like looking at it. I like you displays also!

Steiner

4) Last one and I need your help, I forget to note the name of this when I got it DOH!

3) 1300 years Aniversary of Bulgaria

Interesting to note that the horse depicted on this medal called the Madara rider and is a UNESCO site in Bulgaria.

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/43

2) 25 years of Socialism

Gentlemen

Here is my small collection of Bulgarian medals. Some of them I have identified and others I could use some help with. Please correct my descriptions if needed.

1)20 years of the Bulgarian Army

For normal British stuff, thee are good, if you start saving far enough (decades?) in advance. I am surprised they are so good at southern Artican medals, for they make a dog's dinner out of southern Asian ones.

See, for example

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=2450&st=17

Interesting my group would be a 14-15 star, BWM, and VM. Hard to screw up that group.

Do you have a ballpark figure on how much that would be? Sound like it maybe 100 GBP +. Ouch.

Steiner

Thanks for the advice Ed. I liked that mounting so much I was considering having Spinks do my Greatgrandfather's WW1 group. Now I will reconsider.

Regards

Steiner

I would like to see the other group also if you get a chance to post it. I really like the group you got Spinks to mount also they did a wonderful job. They should for that price LOL.

Steiner

I have no more Zim ODM but I have acouple of neat things.

recording called Green leader in which the Rodesian force jump the boarder to Monzambique shut down the airport and take out a terrorist camp. Interesting listen.

A propoganda booklet on the terrorist crimes commited in Rodesia in the 60 and 70's really graphics stuff.

I work with a gentlemen who has the Rodesian flag that hung at one of the camps. At sunset on the last day of Rodesia he was told to take it down. He did and then took it home. It is now in Canada. Need to ask him for pictures.

I also understand on the last day of the Rodesian Army the officers opened up the armoury and told the boys they could take home all the guns thy wanted to. An interesting fact.

Steiner

Nice group and a very low number on your Zimbabwe Independence Medal. Mine is 69441. If you went there today that would would have cost you at least $1,000,000,000 Zim dollars or 35 cents US.

I have a friend whos mother still lives there he says it is cheaper to use $100 zim bills as toilet paper than buying a roll.

Steiner

Thanks Rick I would say aluminum, for sure.

Steiner

One more question please. Is there anything that denotes what era these are from?

regards

Steiner

Thank you gentlemen!

Steiner

This was again a pickup from years ago. I have no idea what these are other than the obvious Soviet pilot wings.

Does anyone have any idea?

Many thanks

Steiner

Thanks Doc.

Hello gentlemen

I have had this medal in my collection for a while. I was an ebay pick from a few years back. I understand the ribbon is incorrect for the medal and also the ring has been replaced by a piece of copper wire.

I would like to know if there are any of you would like to trade this ribbon for the correct one or know of a resource so I can get the proper ribbon and maybe the ring.

Many thanks

Steiner

Dave thanks for some wonderful info and to Kev for starting out this thread about an issue I had always wondered about.

Greatily appreciated.

Steiner

Hallo Gents

might sound like a daft question, but can any member put a figure to how many Prussian /German Officers of Jewish origin served in WW1.

Was there a campaign against them / were they viewed with mistrust?

The reason I ask is hopefully the answers will blow away another myth with regards their service being small and menial.

If you would care to post figures for the Allies as well please do.

Kevin in Deva.

Kev if memory serves me right I believe one of the officers over Hitler during WW1 was a Jew. Need to source that in a book I have tonight for sure.

Steiner

The war of 1812 between Canada (Britain) and America continued on until 1815. British forces recently freed up from Napoleon?s defeat in Europe were redeployed to North America.

These tokens were originally produced for use as half pennies for Wellington?s army in Spain and Portugal and found there way over to the Americas in the kit and pockets of British soldiers.

At that time Canada relied on British currency which was always in limited supply. To supplement this US and Spanish coinage was used. Private tokens were issued also by merchants to keep the flow of cash going.

In 1825 a law was past in Canada banning all private coinage. Due to a loophole in the law those coins with dates 1825 and earlier were still acceptable as currency.

The Wellington Token was a prime candidate for forgery as many people knew of them but they were not extremely common in change. Various forgeries exist and were manufactured in Canada. Below is one example from my collection which I date to about 1830-40 but is stamped 1814.

Wellington token stayed in circulation within Canada until confederation in 1867. When colonial tokens were phased out and replaced with Dominion cents.

I think it pretty amazing that the Napoleonic era and the war of 1812 had such an impact on the currency Canadians used during the first half on the nineteenth century.

Steiner

Odd stuff. Maybe it is Monty's I know he was a tea toadeler. I doubt there was one for the Navy with the rum ration and all.

I also would have expected the inscription to be in latin, but who knows.

Thanks for posting it.

Steiner