Ed_Haynes

And the next page.

Photo closeup.

The document for the Badge of Honor.

Once again, I need help with the name.

A close-up of the "exotic", the Honored Civil Engineer badge.

Another new one.

Ivan Sergeyevich Gladun

Order of the Badge of Honor T4 V1 #672382

Veteran of Labor

Honored Civil Engineer of the Ukranian SSR

100 Years of Lenin's Birth

Socialist Competition winner badges from 1973 & 1975

Any thoughts? I doubt any research will ever be possible, but it won't stop me from asking (once the pipeline begins to clear ).

Pavel Alexandrovitch Kashurets

Thanks! My skills at reading cursive writing are getting better!

Inside.

And what -- I am led to believe -- may eventually sort out as something interesting, his Medal for Valor document (no photo either):

Inside.

RBL document. Help with name and other details, please! No photo, alas.

Pavel Alexandrovitch Kashurets

Just in, a nice little group:

1- Red Banner of Labor, T5 V2 - #274699

2- Medal for Valor - unnumbered

It is my understanding that there will be a MAJOR reshaping of Chinese awards within the next few months. Watch this space . . . .

Thanks for mentioning that, I'd been told about it. Actually I think it is ?1695. From what I have been told, a better scan of the serial number would be nice. Sukhbaatar fakes are now being reported, so some care is needed.

Have cleaned PM, have fallen behind on almost everything during final exams, sorry.

There is one "Trafalgar Cross", never has been one. Whoever came up with THAT one knows less than nothing about British awards.

Better that this quiz stick to "Eastern Bloc" (whatever THAT means) awards.

Good news. He got his medals back. And this is any more important than any desire for revenge or punishment.

I am definitely with you there, my friend The ANS sale disappointed me quite a bit. Their numismatic catalogues/sylloges are fantastic and yet, I did not even know they had such a great holding of medals and decorations until the sale. Perhaps such an institution just for medals might advance phaleristics similarly.

But at least we have the Morton and Eden catalogues of what the ANS collection once was. A good friend of mine gave many things to them, some of which I know never made it into the sale, so this raises some interesting questions. I know he was very disappointed with the almost total lack of care and preservation the things he gave to them were getting and, at the time of his death, was thinking about asking them to give him his stuff back. I'm glad he didn't live to see the sale, though.

I should hasten to add that I am NOT disputing the notion that donations to museums are bad ideas - on the contrary, that same neglect that befell McKay's collection also befell a lot of stellar stuff in the coin cabinet as well (in fact, that's part of the reason why the Mint took it back). I just wanted to at least chime in defense of some numismatists.

They aren't all bad, Eric. Some of my best friends are numismatists. But they aren't phalerists, and we ought not expect them to be. Case in point: The ANS sales. Did the OMSA make a mistake in giving their library over to the the ANA?

And Eric's point on staff cuts is important. When I was there, the Military and Naval Division had a director and three staff. And I know they had major cuts after I left.

Long years ago, in a universe far, far away, when I was an undergraduate at my university, I was a summer research intern in the Division of Military and Naval History at the Smithsonian. Scary thought: This was 1976, as I recall the OMSA convention in Philadelphia -- my first -- and the absolute tourist-infested chaos in DC that July. It was a great experience, mostly working on things I cared little about, but I learned how to do research that summer.

I also learned about the organization and structure of the Smithsonian. The division in which I worked was concerned (as one might expect, being lodged in the National Museum of AMERICAN History) only with US military and naval items. While good curatorial and research work was done in fields the staff cared about, no one knew anything (or cared at all) about medals. The boxes of WWI Victory Medals I mentioned above were just items in storage, no one had looked at them in years or decades. Likewise, no one had bothered even to prepare a focused catalogue of Pershing's medals, which were all crammed into a single collection drawer (and I do mean crammed). I offered to order and catalogue them, and everyone found this exotic, but sure, humour the kid, let him do it (until they all had to get shoved aside when my desk was taken to lodge the collection item that some Midestern kid and his congresssman wanted to share a photo-op with: Cher Ami -- Pershing's medals get shoved aside for a bloody pigeon!).

Back on topic. The McKay collection was not under the Military and Naval Division -- as most of his medals were not US -- but was under the Numismatic Division. The organization of the Institution presented problems here. Portions of the McKay collection (tiny parts) were on display not in the square feet assigned to Numismatics (as they weren't real things: Coins), but in the area assigned to Military and Naval. A major and literal turf war was brewing the summer I was there, as the naval archaeology displays (the field of the division's director) were expanding and they needed the space "those silly medals" took up. These petty office and inter-office politics infest even the Smithsonian. As a temporary staff member, I wasn't able to gain any access to the McKay collection, though it was quite clear as it wasn't US and wasn't COINS or TABLE MEDALS, it wasn't seen as important. We have seen recently with the American Numismatic Society sales even more evidence as to why phaleristics is not numismatics, and why we maybe can't trust those numismatic types, even though they claim to be our cousins.

Any museum, whether in the 1970s or now, is there to do two things: display and research. The displays -- especially for a place like the Smithsonian -- have to play to the least common public denominator, to have more resemblance to a circus than to serious scholarship. With limited display space, you can and will only display those things that catch the eye and attention of the undeding streams of busses of school children -- George Washington's uniform and the nice shiny Gatling Gun were prime draws, while visitors strolled quickly past the McKay pieces on display, right past, I watched them do it, not a glance. The research is conducted by a very able staff on things that interest them (and, yes, it sounds like fun). One of them was finishing a book on post-Civil War US saddles, for example. The director of my division was doing underwater archaeology on Revolutionary War and War of 1812 era gunboats. The guy I did research for was working on repeating weapons during the Revolutionary War. No one cared AT ALL about medals. The numismatic folks cared even less, focusing on US coins and, because it was the director's pet interest, on Italian renaissance (table) medals.

I assume the McKay collection is still there, and I wouldn't be susprised if some of it had simply been lost -- to imagine Smithsonian storage, think about the final scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" -- and possibly some of it has strolled out the back door, though I doubt it. Poor Mr. McKay, in retrospect that donation was quite unfortunate.

As "922F" has said, collectors are better custodians than museums. Rather than give your collection to a museum, give it to the OMSA (you'll get the same tax break or can put it into your will) and let them auction it for the research fund (as I think happened with Al Gleim's collection). It will wind up in the right hands, collectors' hands.

See:

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showuser=1102

More unneeded negative publicity. No wonder most people think we are nuts and pass laws against us?

Thanks Ed. That looks nice, is that a Maori design?

Yes, New Zealand has been very good about incorporating Maori designs, colours, and languages.

The New Zealand ribbon page given, without citation above, is Antonio's.

http://www.coleccionesmilitares.com/cintas/cintasoc.htm#n (and click on New Zealand)

See also Lukasz's page.

http://www.medals.lava.pl/bc/nz1.htm

I get students who don't cite their sources expelled from the university. It is called plagiarism.

See also, for the Queen's Service Order: http://www.omsa.org/photopost/showphoto.ph...ze=big&cat=

What was that word, "research"? Not sure it is my Soviet phaleristic vocabulary anymore. Wait wait wait wait.

Your picture however depicts the Battle of Trafalgar. Was there an order named after this battle?

No, of course not.

If he were very very old he might have gotten the Naval General Service Medal with clast for "Trafalgar".