medalnet

and the reverse

below my contribution on minis.

Stogieman, The tooling was never made for bronze gilt pieces. They used the tooling formerly used for golden pieces to make the cheap end of the WWI timeframe bronze gilt order decorations. Ergo: There are golden pieces from the same tooling.

Did you test yours? There some oxidations that look rather not typical for a golden piece. gold does oxidizes, yet in different colors. I marked those places in your picture...

...and the reverse:

It comes down to the tooling. Tooling for golden order decoration lasts a lot longer due to the soft material. Since they had those, they would use them to coin/stamp the bronze gilt pieces. There are even commander crosses of the Ernestine house order made from gilt bronze in a hollow fashion. This explains the similar light weight. By the way, here is the big brother of the golden knight badge:

...and here is a GOLD one, scratch mark "W":

By the way, the bronze gilt ones are hollow made as well as their golden brothers and sisters. Especially Ernestine House order or the silver gilt MVOs

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I knew it is bronze gilt.... Let me tell, you that it is not that easy to determine weather something is bronze gilt or gold just by looking at it. Unfortunately some states went from silver gilt to bronze gilt during the end of WWI. For example the Ernestine house order knight badges with swords are almost always bronze gilt. Yes, I know they always feature red and yellow gold, but are still bronze gilt. So are those pictured here. Very untypical swords and looking at the crown I can see some oxidation that is not typical for gold. there you go.... It is still a very nice piece stogieman.

That is true memory. I had already forgotten. Anyway, very nice piece. It is quite interesting how many different varaitions exist on the House Order of Hohenzollern.

Absolutly. This piece has interesting swords. I assume one could see from the side that those are put together from two pieces.

Are there any markings? Could we see the side of the swords?

Very nice topic. Lots of fun until one reaches the real rare ones. You definetly don't want to miss the next Thies auctions in order to fill the real gaps.

Several were made in Wuppertal, Germany, for decades until about 10 years ago. Nice electroplated/formed fakes.

No, don't have one either. It would be especially nice to own one from Strelitz on a medal bar. I hope Santa Claus is reading my wish list correctly this year.

Yes, it is unfortunately true. It seems that most modern publications are a summary of secondary sources. So the result is that there is nothing ever new and all mistakes surface ones more. A shame!!! Yet, at least the quality of the pictures is getting better.

It is to the commander. The star is made by Quellhorst (Hausinger successor in 1850), who stoped producing by 1880. A really fine example of on of the earlier stars.

Anybody wants to guess who the bearer of all those goodies is? I also have the documents....

Of course I don't have a picture of the one handy with the knight first with crown, but here is a picture of the other one in my collection:

No, it has not, yet I bought it from the family who could not recall the actual recipient. Amazing how some people treat their family heritage (...well, good for us collectors). I try to dig out a picture of it to post. Let me also mention that those numbers in Nimmergut's "book" are not correct. I believe that those are only the Hessian recipients. The person that actually did the research in the first place had only the source for the Hessians availiable.

They looked different in color to me, but...it always helps to see the real thing. Yet, the 1st class was awarded only very scaresly....normally found with some more orders and medals...anyway

Very interesting, is it hollow?

Could the second commander badge be a Bavarian MVO?

The piece that started this post seems to be made by Neuhaus in my opinion...but again, I wuold need to see it life.