China Interesting Chinese Medal

[Stogieman]

Not my area, but rather scarce would be my (un)educated guess. Wu Pei Medal, cased

[Stogieman]

Reverse:

[Ed_Haynes]

Interesting. So little is known about these warlord period medals.

[Ulsterman]

Be very, very careful with these-the back looks very much like a new fake"replacement" series of hungarian medals that are floating around this year.

[Stogieman]

Not my bag... has a case with Chinese iodiograms on the lid. medal appears to fit into the tray perfectly. The medal I don't know about but I can tell you the case looks quite legitimate to my eyes. Available at Time Traveler, under "This week's new buys"

[jinjin]

Fake

[JapanX]

100% original medal in original case.

Made in silver.

If I remember correctly obverse inscription reads

"Awarded by General Wu Pei Fu, 3rd Division Commander, Chief Officer for Inspections and Patrols, Hunan and Hupeh Provinces"

Reverse inscription reads

"For unselfish Service"

Edited January 6, 2014 by JapanX

[drclaw]

Nick, these ones have always intrigued me, namely how they printed his face onto a medal in a way where it didn't rub off with normal usage.

Most of the ones I've seen were uncased and with the image almost completely intact.

Was a 'glaze' fired over the image to seal it?

[JapanX]

My guess is that these melainotypes (more info about these can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintype ) were used to ruduce the costs of production. Another possible variant - these photos made awards more personalized.

As we know "people's best friends and servants" always prefer to put their own images on anything that come to hand (especially their own awards )

And you are of course right about the case - these are very rare!

[drclaw]

Fascinating stuff. It says they used potassium cyanide as a photographic fixer!

Whatever you do, DON'T dab your finger on your tongue to clean a smudge on Wu's face ...

Never thought our little armchair hobby could be so potentially fatal!