NavyFCO

This is the sort of photo that you can take in a light box with decent lighting...

The problem that you're having is the fact that you are relying upon the flash for the light source. That's the reason there are some bright and dark spots on the award. There are several ways of getting around this. One is to buy a fabric "light box" with light, from someplace like eBay. I own a Smith-Victor light box that was a "buy it now" (with lights and all) for $95. on eBay. It works great. The second option is to buy just the "box" only, and use that outside. That way, you'll use the bright sunlight, filtered through the white fabric of the box to make even lighting. The boxes run around $40 on eBay, or if you're creative, you can fairly easily make your own (I'm just not handy enough for that!) The third option is to photograph the medals outside on a cloudy (overcast) day. From my experience, this is most of the days in "sunny" England, so you might be in luck there (bad to wait for a cloudy day in say, the California desert!) The clouds esentially serve as a "whole world" (at least your world) lightbox, breaking the direct rays of the sun into smaller, more even amounts. If possible, you should also open your exposure settings on the camera in order to compensate for a lack of flash, and thus take in as much sunlight as possible. Hope that helps! Dave

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Though you could get a REALLY nice diamond for that price......

A little birdie told me that the weather in July 1972 was nice...in Egypt....

By the way, is the photo of the citation hard to read (distorted) or is it just my monitor? The file I uploaded looks okay, but the one on the thread doesn't.... If it's hard to read I can post a better one. Dave

And the bottom part.......

And here's the citation! Top part:

As some folks say: "I'ze gots skillzzzzz, baby"

In fact, speak of the devil... Here's an award card I just got yesterday for another 600,000 series Glory 3rd... Dave

One more note... I've seen the 600,000 range Glory 3rds issued between late 1944 and the early 1950s. Really a mixed bag of when they were issued! Dave

I just got notified that all the research is "in" on my remaning Glory 3rds... I always think they're worth researching, even if one (like me) just plans on selling them. Go for it! Dave

Yes! I have found a contact that can get me the award cards via photo instead of photo copy. He can do it for awards that have the name of the recipient, and the turnaround time is about one week. Gotta love competition in the ranks of researchers...... Dave

Just got this award card in today for an unnumbered For Military Merit medal. Any stabs at what he might have gotten the award for??? Dave

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And the reverse... I can also post a photo of the reverse of the star if anyone would like to see more.

Here are a couple pics of another bad hanging "eye" - or so I was told.

I'll be darned! I never noticed it when I owned the group, which I sold about 4-5 years ago. Guess you learn something new every day! Thanks for the education! Dave

A little closer on the boards...

I recently had a lady ask me to ID her grandfather. Can anyone help me out? The shoulder boards are marked with a "TDg" (in Cyrillic) Anyone know what unit that was? Thanks! Dave

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Doc- Thanks for the compliments. I was blessed to have had some really beautiful groups through my hands since starting to collect Soviet awards back in 1992. I appreciate the interest in these older ones that I used to own as it's kind of fun going back through my hard drive and taking a walk "down memory lane" so to speak. When this group came to me, I paid $900 for it, and then with research I probably invested around another $125 into it. When I sold it for $1080 I was dissapointed, but still didn't lose anything. Some "rough" addition now would show this group be be around $2600 or so (though I'm normally off in my pricing!) Dave

And the confused mess inside his award book!

Order book. The photo has him almost looking young... A few years of War and then you can see the sunken eyes, the receeding hairline, etc., that were evident in the photo with the Big Three.

And the reverses of the Red Stars...