Ed_Haynes

While I have but up here items from the "margins" of my collecting interests (Soviet, Mongolian, Afghan, etc.), I have yet to address my core collecting and research field: Medals to officers and soldiers (Indians only) of the Indian military, both before and after 1947. (When I say "India", I use it as shorthand for South Asia, and post-1947 this can be taken to include Pakistani awards.)

As my interests are focused on Indians, and I really have no particular interest in awards to Europeans (though a couple of accidental groups have crept in), what I do is often -- at best -- marginalised within traditional "British" medal collecting. At times, this has led to unpleasant interactions with some "British" medal collectors. This is unfortunate. I hope that even they find some interest in what I'll post here. As I am a professional historian, some histoprical comntext will also be presented.

I call this an "iceberg", for what I'll be putting up are the high points, and there is much much more beneath the water. Some of these items may be hidden away elsewhere on the forum, but I hope that this will give a bit more copherence and focus that the earlier posts.

While I do not have any special interest in medals to Gorkhas or medals to the police, the workings of the cosmos have brought some nice Gorkha and police items my way. Be assured both are quite accidental.

In some cases more details are available over at http://sagongs.ipbhost.com/index.php (please send me a PM or e-maiol if you want to join that forum too) but in most cases what I'll give here constituites an improvement on even those posts, much less posts found elsewhere on this forum.

As always, serious comments and questions are solicited and are welcomed.

Thanks, Gor. Had doubts.

I know these stripes were used in WWII, having encountered the issue mainly through the protracted policy debate over how they should be worn in the Indian Army (above the right pocket, so no one ever wore them).

Thanks for these, Darrell!

See around & about in here: http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=14945

One lovely group, by the way. Though I DO wonder how he explained away that six-pointed star?!?!?!??!

Morocco ("Spanish" Morocco): Wissam al-Mehdawi / Order of Mehdi, officer (?) (silver?)

Well, it has been my observation that German eBay sellers have an excess of grandfathers.

Normal human inhabitants of Planet Earth have, uh... TWO.

They however appear to have many additional "spares" in Germany.

Well, there was the semester when I had a student who had THREE grandmothers die in the same term, all interrupting exams and assignments. And all were legitimate.

Let me dig out the IALs. I don't have a lot for that period.

A documented hero star was just sold at zeige auction for 6.500 Euro...

HSL?

Really REALLY nice one, Bob!

Anybody heard any news on our researcher?

All I have heard is some very loud silence.

Yes, this is a WWI MC in original case. Both the MC and suspension are silver, but of different grades (I believe) and they certainly tarnish differently (in part due to their degree of contact with the case lining which seems to be ratrher toxic). It is hard (but necessary) to resist the tendancy to polish, for that would destroy the history of the piece and replace it with nasty "bling".

Numbers? Abbot and Tamplin's excellent research shows 37,081 MCs from the creation of the award in 1914 through 1920. There were maybe another 230 (or so) from then until George V's death in 1936 and the transition to the new George VI design.

The whole issue of provenance needs to be treated with some care. The MC was, unusually for British awards, unnamed so you can never be very sure about anything. Some were privately named (but this adds a whole new area of concern). When a medal is in an original mounted group, you have some certainty, but anything else is just an attribution, a story, maybe a fantasy.

Value? Not a game I like to play. The 2008 Medal Yearbook (controversial enough in its own right) shows a George V single MC at ?500-550. A case will add a bit, but not a lot. Checking a couple of reliable dealers' lists, I find single WWI MCs at around ?500, cased around ?550. Take this with sone size of grain of salt.

Hope this helps.

Looks to me to be a proper WWI-era George V MC, in Royal Mint case. It has had a hard life, but seems OK to me. The copies (= fakes) are more common for the scarcer Georgs VI award, but they do exist (and for almost everything these sad days, it seems).

Thanks also, Alex.

Thanks again, Chuck. I need to ramp up my skills in this area. Let me know if you want a raw large scan of Spitcurl Girl.

Thanks, Chuck. I -- and more importantly, THEY -- appreciate this.

I think we need to be very VERY careful in co-mingling

-- Imperial (pre-1911) Chinese awards

-- Republic of China (1911-50) awards

-- Taiwan ('Republic of China') awards (1950--)

These are VERY different creatures.

Some day, I shall try sorting out various jumbled threads in this sub-forum . . .

Named on reverse.

Much tweaking.

One more, in hopes of enciting interest.

Happy family.

All NKVD officers. Those nice kind people who beat you up (and worse) in the Lubyanka.

Paul

Yes, but these are so widely faked that . . . ???

See, guys. There is a tremendous danger in talking about fakes in a public area, for we run the real risk of educating the faker-scum and helping them make their sewer-worthy-product better. I don't know where the narrow line falls between educating ourselves and educating them.

The saddest thing (?) is that the fakers don't seem to see anything wrong with their shameful activities.

Once again, I am very glad I don't bother with this Third Reich stuff.

See . . . see . . . a good reason to attend the OMSA conventions.

Grand Rapids??

There were, of course, no standard designs for these. Enterprising local manufacturers created and then filled the "market". I'm not sure any thought was given as to what the families were supposed to do with these cumbersome things.

Any frame -- then or now -- would just be an "after-marfet" affectation.

Hmmm.... Pippi Longstockings with a leather overcoat and a Broomhandle Mauser...

My thought (fantasy) exactly!

LOVE the spit curl!!!!

she would be a morale booster.

joe

Until she pulled out her Mauser pistol?