Great Dane

I think you guys are missing the OP's point... This is clearly a medal meant to commemorate the Boer War in some way. It bears the 1999-2002 years on the reverse, so it wasn't meant to be passed of as an original. The question is... who made it?... and for what reason?

Well, the newspaper mentions the bicentennial of the birth of the Earl of Chatham, who (if it refers to William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham) was born in 1708...

OK... re-reading the thread and I'm confused... The top display seems to belong to Sir Henry Keppel (who was probably never awarded the Order of the Sword?). I can't read the brass plate, but I would assume it is his awards... The bottom display belongs to his son Colin Richard Keppel, and I assume that this is the Swedish breast star that Graf acquired? So isn't it the date for Colin Richard Keppel that Graf is asking for?

Ahh.. my bad... He is not listed in the 1886 edition... so must have been awarded it after that... Any chance that this is a 'father and son' display?

What a shame to split it up... Regarding the Swedish Order of the Sword: According to the Swedish State Calendar, he was awarded the Commander 1. class i 1908.

But it doesn't change the fact, that the new owner does not own those ebay photos either? Even if the seller did have the right to publish photos of the object, the copyright of those photos is not automatically transferred to the new owner. As an example (like your bikini example): If I took a photo of medal to sell it on ebay, the new owner of that medal does not own the right to that photo. To the OP: Yes, I have published my own photos (of medals), that were 'reused' by someone else. Since it was done without bad intentions (only for illustrations), I didn't follow up on it...

And Simius, correct me if I'm wrong... Most people think that if they buy an old photo on ebay, they also own the photos the seller uploaded to ebay to show and sell the old photo, but they don't. Those new photos still belong to the seller (or maybe to ebay... I haven't studied the fine print to see if the copyright is transferred to ebay in this case...).

We have some experts in here that should be able to pin it down. To me it looks like a second type, third class, third grade (the center stone might have been replaced and it obviously misses the top stone). I can not speak for the authenticity - I'm not knowledgeable enough when it comes to that...

I'm not familiar with the classes of this order, but something that corresponds to a Commander grade (with or without a breast star - he may have chosen not to wear one even if he was awarded one).

Second neck order (on the top photo) looks like the Turkish Order of Osmanieh.

Here is my b/w filter applied (as you can see, the uniform is not significantly 'dis-colored' by the filter): As you can see, there are some differences - the cuffs are not as dark and the black parts of the medal ribbons are more pronounced. So my b/w filter is not perfect (I'm OK with that 😄), but I still think it proves - or at least makes it possible - that your guy is wearing the ON medal on its correct ribbon.

Thank you, but the point I'm trying to make is this: In the thread I linked to, we have a multicolored bar, a modern color photo and (with 99.99% certainty) an old b/w photo of that same bar. I then tweaked a b/w conversion filter in Photoshop and applied it to the WHOLE color photo and got a pretty good match to the old b/w photo (all colors on that multicolored bar!). So I'm pretty convinced that my b/w filter accurately mimics the old photo/development process. Then I applied the SAME b/w filter to your ON medal color photo and got the result on the right in my comparison. This convinced me that the medal your guy is wearing is in fact the ON medal on its correct ribbon. Point is, I did not create a NEW b/w filter for this test. That would not have proven anything, for with only 2 distinct colors, you can get pretty much any result you want. I also did not just apply a filter to some part of the photo and another filter to other parts. Again, that would not have proven anything. In theory, if you could find the identical uniform and medals that your guy is wearing and take a color photo, I should be able to apply my b/w filter and get the exact same b/w photo as you have.

Just for the fun of it, I took your ON image and applied some b/w conversions to it. The middle is a standard b/w conversion. The right one is applying (crudely) the filter I applied to the color image in the other thread (less G, C and M and more B). I didn't fine tune the conversion.

You make some good points, Jef. So maybe it is a different medal... or the wrong ribbon... or...? As you say... question marks indeed...

I'm not an expert in the photographic process (I mentioned emulsion, but it could also be a step in the developing - I don't know). But I do know, that it is not 'general' in the sense that bright colors appear dark and vice versa. If you look at the photo I manipulated in the thread I linked to, I would not have been able to predict the result just by evaluating light/dark. You really have to play around with the individual channels and the results are sometimes quite unexpected (like yellow becoming really dark, almost black, while other bright colors stay the same). Now, for your specific medal, I can't say which one it is. I just wanted to add some information about comparing old and new b/w photos.