NavyFCO

Here's one of his Red Banners...

Now that I'm home, here are a couple citations that came with the group. Unfortunately, I cannot find the translations that I did of the research, and I just sent off the research for the group about two weeks ago to the new owner, so I can't scan that either. But, here are two citations I have from the group that were done before I bought it and that I scanned. I've trimmed them tight to not be a huge file... I hope they're readable! Dave

by the way, the research was done long ago on the group. It was misplaced somehow by the seller, but luckily I had a copy of the research which has been forwarded on to the new owner of the group. Dave

And another... This one was sold on eBay about six months ago to the same dealer who sold the Kulishenko group. This is another that would run about $1000 less than Kulishenko, but still has the double Red Banner (consecutive serial numbers, no less!) and a Nevsky - all for combat valor. Sorry for the dark photo, but this was the only photo I had of the whole group together when it was in my collection. Dave

Continuing with my thought in my previous post, here's a group that would be valued somewhere around $1500 less than the group to Kulishenko. Still with a Nevsky, two Red Banners, and Red Star, none of which are long service awards. In addition, he was a Stalingrad to Berlin veteran and all of the medals have their documents. The only drawback is that the group doesn't have a photo of the recipient, but that's it. For my money, this would be a "dream" group if you just had to have a single Nevsky/Red Banner combat group. Dave

Perhaps I'm jaded (that's actually probable...) but for the money, I'd contemplate changing my dreams to another group. This one is nice, but I think that you can find better for lesser money, unless you REALLY want the #3 Red Banner, as that drives up the price considerably. The Nevsky is nice, the two Red Banners are nice, the photo in the book is nice, but in my personal opinion, if you are to spend your life savings on a single group, this isn't the one. Just my two cents - and I am certain that many would disagree with me on my thoughts. Dave

Of course this group is okay. It was originally from my collection. Dave

And the reverse of this one. Once again, this is how I'd expect a real one to look, though there are still two small "bump" spots that I think would have been hit by quality control at the mint at the 5 and 7 o'clock positions. I think though that this is a good one for a "benchmark"...

Here's another out on the market... This one is courtesy of Collectrussia.com. Note the enamel on this one. Although it's rather broken up, this is what the enamel SHOULD look like!

And the document... I'm not a fan of the photo in it, but I do really like the handwriting. MUCH nicer than the normal "felt tip pen" handwriting that's so common to fakes these days.

The backside. Note how the screwpost has been replaced (duh). It appears that the back was damaged quite considerably, though before the damage you can see that it was pretty well made.

Here's one that's being currently offered on e! I'm still not 100% of a fan of this one, but it's much closer to what I'd expect of a real one to look like. Note the quality of the NKVD lettering, and the like. Unfortunately, the enamel still looks a bit too "shallow" and insufficiently translucent enough to be the original enamel... though I could be wrong. Dave

But alas! It is! You must have forgotten! You just HAVE to have the Ukaz date in order to get a copy of the Ukaz then any of the associated newspaper coverage of the award. That's how we've found out about the school teachers getting their awards at X and X times and so on. Unfortunately, the later ones are a bit tougher to research - I just bought a group with a Lenin/Oct Rev/2 RBL and Honor Order from the 1970s, but the chances of that being researchable are slim... but worth it to me! One of my greatest research boons was a beaut of a Heroic Labor medal which came back as researched to a worker on the USSR-Iran railway line for lend lease goods. Pretty darn cool, I think - and 100% civil. Now Rick, what you should do is make an accessable database of all the known civil awards, numbers and Ukaz dates so we can try to pin down who-was-awarded-what-when... Now that would be something! Dave

That's a neat, but really odd compass. I don't have a clue what kind of naval vessel would use that... Perhaps something small like a patrol craft. I think the NKVD markings might be more of an ownership marking rather than a "specially made for..." marking. It would be easy to put on the NKVD markings at the factory, making it already on the compass when delivered to the fleet. This would prevent an NKVD compass from being "borrowed" by a sailor and ending up on another ship/boat. I'm guessing that the NKVD, being the border guards, bought their supplies out of a different "pot" of money and probably had better equipment than the run-of-the-mill naval vessels, thus making theft entirely possible. Did you buy it? Dave

You're not losing much. I think it might have gotten $10 from someone on eBay without the other entries. I venture to bet that if you went to sell it, you still might get $10 for it... Dave

From another fan of labor awards... TO be an HSL was a HUGE honor in the USSR. So, I would assume that in order to be given the title, you had to do something pretty spectacular - even if it was having a lot (a LOT) of pigs on your farm! I do think it funny that most people won't even give a second glance to civilian labor awards, or a group of awards to a "non-combat" military guy. Getting back research for an award (no matter how high) to a logistics guy is a death knell for the saleability of the piece, so often times this kind of research tends to "dissapear" (yep, that's true!) in order for the group to bring a better value. But, what people who aren't familiar with the military and it's interworkings forget is that for every one person to be on the front, it took dozens of people behind the scenes making sure he had a uniform, a gun, food, ammunition, gasoline and the like! Imagine a soldier and how well he could fight in the modern world if he had to get his own food, provide his own uniform and use a knife! Sometimes those "unglamourous" people deserve the 51% of the credit for great military victories! Dave

Jack- I appreciate your example, but you kind of "set us up for failure" with the initial list of awards. No where in that list of awards did you mention anything about the National Defense Service Medal, Korean Service Medal or Korea UN. In fact, he should have had two awards of the NDSM, and probably at least a handful of campaigns on the Korean Service. I could see that he left those off were he just to wear his personal awards, but he put together a rather mish-mash of awards, ranging from personal awards to campaign ribbons. As I said in my first post, it was either an impossible combination, or it belonged to someone who didn't care about regulations... and it appears that the latter was the case. Dave

Guys - thanks for the compliments on the document. I have owned temporary documents for quite a few awards before, ranging from For Valor medals to Patriotic Wars and Partisan medals. Several of my posthumous awards only have their temporary documents, never having the actual book issued to the family. All of the temp docs I've had before were the "stock" temporary document - not a "homemade" job like this one. It's almost kinda... cute! I wonder what kind of work the "Worker Battalion 108" did? Dave

I just got this in with a pile of misc. paper. I've never seen one before... It's a temporary document for a Victory Over Germany medal, issued from the 108th Worker Battalion. Anyone else seen one of these before? Dave

Rick- I think you fairly well hit it there. Some of this stuff is rare enough where there aren't many experts out there on it. Just imagine my chagrin at some of the Russian Civil War stuff that I collect where I am the only (known) collector of such-and-such type of thing in the US... A lot of it is new trail blazing, that's for sure! I too have run into experts that are all to eager to weigh in their opinions. I think there might be a bit of a language barrier as some of the Russian collectors that I correspond with (not many US collectors that collect RCW uniforms!) have no problem with labelling something that I have as "fake" and giving no elaboration. Just recently, as an example, I showed one of my flags (and a poor photo of it, I might add) that I am 100000% confident in it's originality to a Russian collecting counterpart of mine who simply told me "It's a fake, I've seen several of those in the past two years. All are fake." I was like... "Uh... okay... so explain to me how you can figure that out from a 500 pixel-wide side view shot of the flag???" OF course, no further elaboration than "I know it's fake". It put me in the same position as you... thinking "That don't help me much!" But, hey, I've learned a lot from the guy, and just chocked that as one more thing to learn from him: Don't show him pictures of that flag! Back the NKVD egg... Unfortunately, you're running into difficulty because of two things. First, there are very few collectors of this type of stuff in the US, or the West for that matter. For every twenty collectors of Soviet orders and medals, you might find one or two collectors who would buy this sort of badge. I'm not saying they're bad, it's just that they're pretty pricey to "cut" one's teeth on (best analogy I can think of with a teething wee one in the house!) with at least a $650 layout just to get one badge... let alone with document, cloth, etc. The second issue is that there are quite a few collectors of these over in Russia, and there are quite a few collectors in Russia with the money to buy these. Anytime there's collectors with money willing to buy stuff there will be fakes, and these have been churned out as fakes as early as when I was seeing fake ones frequently on the market by the time I left Russia for the last time in October 1996. Badges, documents, you name it - all of these have been turned out for the better part of a decade in decent (and often near perfect) quality. So, you have the situation where you're one of few collectors here who collect these things in a sea of fakes - and a sea of good fakes at that. It's unfortunately a tough thing to collect and a collecting field filled with both landmines and no good maps to make your way through the field! I wish I could offer better advice than this, but this is one of those few things where it's easier to point out what's bad on something than what's good on a "good" one as I have seen very few that I would be completely confident in their originality on the market over the past fourteen years. Dave

Whoa folks!!!!!!!!!!!! I said up front in my post that I am by no means an expert on this sort of thing, but I think it only right that if one of our fellow forum-ites bought something that was less than genuine, that it's our responsibility to make constructive comments to guide them in what we believe to be the truth. I personally don't think that I have by any means been "out of bounds" with my comments about the badge and/or uniform. I could have just said "I think it's fake" like many other posters here on the forum without any substance to my claims. Instead, I thought I did a decent job in respectfully laying out my opinions on the pieces. Have I ever seen or felt any of these badges, or have any that I can post for weights or measures? No. However, I have been collecting Soviet awards and badges since my first time in the former USSR back in 1992 (April, to be exact) and in the last fourteen years I have seen, owned and handled literally thousands of medals and badges produced during the time of the USSR and conversely, those produced after the fall of the USSR in an attempt to deceive. I think I've got a good feeling for what Mint-produced pieces should and should not look like, and in my honest opinion, I don't think this badge looks like anything that Monetni Dvor would have ever allowed out their gates. But, as I put into my earlier posts, I could be 100% wrong and I'll take the beating over it - shame on me for my opinion if someone who knows these badges better can verify that this one is legit. And Rick, for your sake, I hope that it is real as you probably put out decent money on it. I do apologize if my posts were taken wrongly. I did not intend that in any amount. I was simply trying to be helpful! If I should take down my posts, let me know and I will do so. Dave

Here's a photo that I edited to show what I was thinking. The numbers correspond with the numbers in my post, and the "A" is for where I think I can see that the patina is chemically applied. I could be 100% wrong, and I am not devout enough a believer in my fake detection abilities to proclaim that it's good or bad, but were it me and I was buying it based on these photos, I'd probably pass on it even if it were a "good deal". Just too many things I don't like about it, that's all. I still think it looks like the product of a certain Boston-based eBay seller... Dave

Looking at it more, I'd almost guarantee that the screwnut has a chemically applied patina to it. It wasn't fully conducive to the chemical patina, so that's why the patina fluid dried in splotches instead of evently. Also, thinking of patina, I would be curious as to how the pattern of patina ended up on the back of the badge? Note that if the badge had been on the gymnastorka for a while, there would be less patina on the front than on the back, and on top of that, all of the high areas on the back of the badge would be polished off, particularly around the edges, where the uniform cloth would have moved against the badge, even in transport. But if you look at the badge, only a few of the high areas are clean from patina, and all of the edges around the rim aren't clear of patina - in fact, several of the spots on the edges appear to have as heavy a patina as on the front! Furthermore, the soiling of the badge onto the uniform cloth can be explained by the maker applying patina fluid on the badge, then putting it onto the uniform. Then, he probably took a steam iron to it, which drew the patina fluid (which can be diluted with water) through the uniform material, and collected on the reverse - creating both the "old" looking holes and the patina ring on the inside of the uniform. I guess this makes my six cents now... Dave

Looking at the uniform jacket as well, I'm not a fan of how clean the buttons are, compared with how dirty the uniform is. They almost look... new... This didn't come from a certain seller in Boston, did it? Dave

Here's my assessment (and take it for what it's worth...) I'm not a fan of the badge. The reasons why for me not liking it are several: 1- I really, really don't like the enamel on the badge. It's exceedingly inferior to anything I've ever seen on a mint-made piece. I don't like the lettering for the NKVD at the bottom of the scroll. Based on the scans, I'd almost say it looks like dark red paint., especially around the letters. 2- I don't like the "splash" of red enamel on the reverse of the badge. Really sloppy, and I doubt that would have ever made it past Soviet quality control (which they did have at the Mint) 3- I also don't like the finished edge of the badge, as you can see from the area where it appears that too much flashing was out of the die and that was filed down on the bottom reverse edge of the piece. I'm by no means an expert on fakes, but just based on what I've seen before, I don't like this one. Standing by to be corrected... Dave