These smaller LoH specimens have a long history. See recent M&E sales. I have always assumed these were smaller specimens (distinct from miniatures) made to serve a marker that wanted stylishly small medals, like the German "prinzen" stuff. Remember, in a system like most of continental Europe where the award is the piece of paper, you have to buy the medals on the open market and all the inventiveness of individualistic free-market manufacture is in play. We as collectors are left with the quandry as to what is a legitimate specimen and what isn't (unlike, say, the UK or USSR where all gongs are made centrally to standards and awarded as a tangible medal).