Bob

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?

Check it out

I imagine that the fact that a labour award (in this case: HSL) really only offers 2-3 lines of explanation has something to do with it vs. military awards with more lenghty descriptions of what, where, when. Then again, into what detail is it relevant to go for a pig farmer? If you've taken care of 1 pig, you've taken care of a million pigs in a sense. The truly exceptional "workers" would have gotten a state prize instead of a HSL?

Reverse

We need to have another look at these A8's: Dark enamel in center: - 0244 hand-engraved top one with square pinback - 706 rotating tool engraved bottom one with round pin back Light enamel in center - no number for top one (round pin-back) - 508 rotating tool engraved bottom one (round pin-back) No enamel in center - hand-engraved number 0114 (some sort of pin-back) Soon I will be receiving number 0022 which (from pictures seen sofar) is handengraved, with round pinback and as of yet undetermined color enamel. Perhaps somebody is $%^&* with our mind on this medal just like on the Polar Star! Why does it have to be so complicated!

188 for the one with the blob the other doesn't have a number also interesting to start looking at... the blob one (A40.2) has a U-ring as part of the medal whereas the other one (A40.4) has an O-ring also as part of the medal I have no clue what the blob is!

Voila

Reverse

Some additional ones most of which you'll recognize. 2 NIB's - 50 and 60 year of state prosecution - very light badges. Also have the 60 years (D09)with document but I believe it's already posted in this thread or elsewhere.

The one with red booklet is a D05 and does not have a number (as per design). The D03a (with old booklet) is number 163. I also have another one of these (number 819) without booklet.

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Update: 00031 - enamel 01187 - enamel (with unnumbered booklet) 2214 - painted (also note: enamel of suspension is darker blue on this) Soon arriving: - 3074... but with enamel (with numbered booklet) - this must be an odd one out... Please all: post yours along with number so we can see if they switched back to enamel somewhere.

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