Bob

Last pic was from the booklet containing both the second Combat Medal and the Polar Star. Now just for the overview...

Older after the war...

First... a young Mr Damda from the first Combat Medal!

An interesting group... 10 awards. One booklet without award unfortunately (hopefully forgotten to put in the envelope upon shipping!). All awarded to a Mr Damda. Let's have a look at his career:) 1) Honorary Medal of Combat - serial nr "No 854" - awarded on 36-9-26 WAR IS OVER! 2) Medal we won - serial nr 3443 - awarded on 46-7-6 3) Soviet medal "victory over Japan" - awarded 8-?-46 POST-WAR MILITARY ACHIEVEMENTS - 1 booklet 2 awards 4) Another Honorary Medal of Combat - serial nr 4521 - awarded on 1953-9-11 5) Order of Polar Star - serial nr 8143 - awarded 1958-11-15 THEN WORKING IN... CONSTRUCTION??? 6) The record of the people's army (B - N10) with a nice red booklet - no number - awarded 1960-12-9 TIME TO FILL UP.... 7) 40 years of the MPR (medal missing) - serial nr 14083 - awarded 1961 8) Soviet 25 years victory badge - no number - presumably awarded sometime 1970 9) Medal 50 years of the Mongolian people's army - no serial - awarded 1971-3-12 10) 30th anniversary of victory over militaristic Japan - no serial - awarded 1975-9-3 11) Shockworker of the 5th 5 year plan - no serial - awarded 1975-7-16 Now... some interesting pics to follow!

Not the sharpest pic but still nice. All belonging to 1 mother. Unfortunately missing 1 booklet for 1 of the 2 small medals.

I recently tracked down a cased Foundation of Nation medal at an online auction. Placed a bid weeks in advance... received confirmation of my bid... only to later see that the final hammer price was MUCH lower than my bid. Auction house had screwed up and ignored my bid. I'm still trying to decide whether to get extremely angry or extremely sad... nothing as annoying as coming close after a long hunt and then losing due to a screw up like this

Don't know if statue is the largest... but indeed, there's statues / posters of him EVERYWHERE and the statues are all gold colored. In the main city Ashgabat there is a large gold statue on top of a building in the center of the city. The statue turns around automatically to ensure that Turkmenbashy is always facing the sun

The book is in Turkmen WITH English translation fortunately:) It's nice to see that all medals have the president (or his mother) depicted on it:) Apart from one, the new highest medal (instituted after publication of the book) which I saw in the National Museum. If I recall correctly it's the Order of Rukhnama. Rukhnama is a book written by the president. An important book which every Turkmen must have and you must do an exam in the book in order to proceed in your education. To quote the president: "The Koran is Allah's book, but Rukhnama is a holy book".

Just returned from 2.5 weeks of travelling in the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Turkmenistan. Picked up a book their containing pictures + background info on all post-Soviet Turkmenistan awards (i.e. all from the Saparmurat Niyazov "dictatorship" era). If anyone is interested, let me know and I can provide info. Unfortunately, not a lot of awards to be found in Turkmenistan itself. Did visit some museums which contained awards from, for instance, Heros of Soviet Union... but generally reminders of the Soviet era have been wiped away in the country. Even at the big Tolkuchke bazaar outside Ashgabat I was rather disappointed... mainly low end motherhood medals to be found Hopefully more luck when I travel to Moscow and subsequently Caucasus in several months. Kind regards, Bob

6624963303 No, it's not my credit card number but I'm sure you can find a site where you can fill that number in and find... a gold soyombo. First pic looks good... great in fact... but: - why are the other pics on a different background? - and... that first pic looks a bit familiar, didn't you see it on a different website before? So you look at the other pics and notice: - enamel is lighter and rather "spotted" - the ring which should be (and is on the first pic) solidly party of the suspension allowing for the "middle ring" to connect the medal with the suspension appears to be a bit of a DIY job - the enamel between the different parts of the Soyombo sign in the central disc is... well, where is it? seems rather crude - and the list actually goes on (I received some detailed scans) Was considering purchasing it but got scared and walked away. What do you think?

http://www.pjsymes.com.au/articles/suhbaatar.htm Good article giving some insight in early revolutionary history of Suche Bator and Mongolian banknotes.

Interesting

Type 1 (two piece riveted construction) Low = 13 High = 242 Type 2 (one piece construction) Low = 420 High = ? ====================== I believe the above might need to be updated: - B's book shows 115 as a type 2; 420 would rather then be put as highest sighted - Recently 114 was on sale on eBay and this was a type 1 On a different note - rumor has it recently a mongolian hero star (NOT a labour one!) was sold by one of the major western dealers! Anybody on this forum the lucky person?

A little bit over a half a year ago I was on vacation in Ukraine and visited Tschernobyl and Pripyat. Within 100m of the reactor. A bit of a weird place. Got smuggled into the area (didn't want to pay several hundred USD for an official tour) by the local maffia boss who - by sheer luck - I got to know while in Ukraine. The guy was in charge of all transportation within the exclusion zone, smuggling gasoline in and smuggling metals out (he had a large group of people working for him on dismantling old reactors in the exclusion zone). Had a blast... making pictures, drinking cognac in the local Tschernobyl bar, etc. Still - there is clearly some fear... and "do not walk on the grass" was a pretty clear message from our guy that things were NOT ok in that area. Bob

Guys - let's not shoot off several volley's of mails / faxes / calls to the archives now please! I think I read on this site before: let Dr B slowly develop these contacts so they hopefully open up.

Well - what's in the central bank would resolve a lot of my issues! Funny, I got the pic from a site where it was put next to the address of the national archies (will PM you fax / mail / etc. in a minute Ed). Oh well, the mystery continues:)

The archives Dolf.

I don't own the item on the pic. What would be a reasonable price to acquire one?

If I have time I'll post some nice pic's of badges over the weekend. Also have two nice little packages coming my way as we speak. One is a group with 11 awards which is just dying to be researched... but we'll just have to disect it ourselves and speculate what this persons life story is for the time being. Pics to come on this one!

If it helps: I got mine a while ago for around 100 USD. Haven't seen that many on the market recently though (unlike for instance recent tsunami of virgin land cultivators) so I'm holding on to mine as if I paid a lot more for it Odd though... more than 10.000 of these awarded yet where are they? Sometimes this is just a bit odd, similar to the Soviet Mother Heroine order... 500K awarded yet it is not that easy to find one with booklet / award document at all.

There is one on the "site where you can buy everything"-dot-com with #545 yet it is not an Uighur... so it shouldn't exist in that way. Could it be that the same practice that is not uncommon with Soviet Orders of Lenin for instance is also applied to Polar Star? E.g. people were asked to replace an Uighur with a new script one but it continued to have the old number? This would also explain the high price of Uighurs despite - in theory - there being close to 3000 of them based on witnessed numbers. Just a thought...

I understand that 1 of the Order of Victory eventually found its way into private hands. Is it known which one this is (ie presumably not one awarded to Zhukov for instance) and where it's gone to?

Can anybody identify the bottom right hand corner item? Thanks

Now, who has the key?