Soviet Groups belong together not sold separately!

[JimZ]

Gentlemen,

I am angry and need to vent. I am sick and tired of sellers who think that they can play God and split up a group. And the sad excuse that one out of a group of 6 medals is missing just does not justify any reason to break up what belongs together.

Admittedly, all of us have bits and pieces of groups and that is bad enough. Guilty as charged. But hey, the 1990s saw enough russian being groups torn apart. Over 25 years down the line, you'd have thought we'd have learnt better but some people are still there ripping groups apart.

And the sad thing really is...there is nothing anyone can do to stop this from happening. Appealing to a sellers ethics does not always cut it and in our effort to salvage a group, some of us will end up bidding against eachother, ruining the other's effort to salvage the group.

Some sellers ought to be blacklisted! Of course groups will still be destroyed as long as there are "collectors" who are ready to buy the bits and pieces......

Jim

[Riley1965]

Jim,

I agree with You 100%

Doc

[Ed_Haynes]

Agree completely, Jim. Once broken, the groups will stay broken up except in extraordinary circumetances of great luck. As far as those collectors and dealers who tear groups apart, . . .

Though it does make you wonder wistfully where the single medals in our collections came from? (Background sound of groups being ripped asunder.)

[IMPERIAL QUEST]

Hi Jim,

Sadly, many have the attitude that the items are theirs, and they can do as they please.....very true indeed, but this is not the mentality of someone who considers themselves as curators/custodians of history. One of the problems with some folks on say....e-bay is that #1, they are not history-minded collectors, and #2 they are keenly aware that there are serious collectors who will pay almost any amount to keep a group together.

Knowing this, these sellers deliberately split groups into single item auctions, and reference "other items from the same individual" in the auction because they know that their profit will probably be double or triple the price they would have received for a "group" auction. I have seen it many times, and it does bother me greatly.

[Kev in Deva]

Hallo Jim,

While agreeing with you, I see no way to control this, the seller has the right to do with his property what he wants, we can blacklist all we want, but that wont change anything, it is not only Russian items, but even WW1 German medal bars, one seller; 24432081 on British Ebay persistently strips the medals from the main bar and sells all items, as seperate objects, he has been doing this for over 5 years now, and behind his thinking is money, if you want all the items together then you better be prepaired to bid high on all of them individualy.

One of his current descriptions "Direct from Germany. Nice, original, Soldbuch. Part of a small collection, for a musketeer, Wilhelm Lindhorst, from the K?nigreich Preu?en / Kingdom of Prussia, who survived WW 1, served in Inf. Regt. 83. Holder of the Iron Cross !!. Here ; "Soldbuch". Not complete, pages 1-10, & 17-24, + coupons at the back (loose). With personal & some service details. Dated from 1914 - 1919 (coupons). Page 2 records the award of his Iron Cross, 14.6.1918, & the award of Black Wound badge. Page 5 has details of his innoculations, for typhus & cholera. Lots of other hand written details & assorted unit ink stamps. In good/fair, used condition, with slip case, - see scans."

See his latest offerings at: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/GERMAN-BAYERN-MVK-RA...1QQcmdZViewItem

This seller alone must be responsible for splitting up hundreds of items, Ebay love him because he is a POWERSELLER with 4582 sales, but thats what happens when people are in it for the money not the history.

It's up to each of us to try and hold together what we can, for future genorations.

Kevin in Deva

[JimZ]

Hey guys,

This is even more blatant....

"This order is the part of the group of ....... awards. I am selling FIVE out of six decorations.......... One of his decorations (Military Red Banner) is lost, so I decided to brake the group. But if you decide to collect the rest of his decorations, please also check lots # ........... Of course, the value of the group will go up. "

Fact is, I'd salvage the group if I could but I would not put a single dollar towards this if I missed a single medal. And the risk of course is that someone gets into feeding frenzy mode and sweeps that one medal away. As much of a hero as I sometimes like to be, you got to just let some groups go!

And on the other hand, some of us are out there looking for what has been described as a needle in a haysatck when we are trying to find missing Red Stars, OGPWs etc etc.

The initiative taken by some of our beloved russian ODM dealers should be applauded:

http://www.soviet-screwbacks.com/cgi-bin/o...ng=0&ref=ok

Looking at the entries already in this database lots of collectors are much more serious about what they are doing...... I just put in some missing orders only the other day from research and award booklets. Maybe one day I'll be lucky too and manage to re-unite a couple of groups. Just as it may take years of luck and diligence to re-unite, a group is so easily broken.

Jim

..... And for crying out loud...get your spelling right if you're going to 'brake' a group!!!

[Guest Rick Research]

DO NOT BID ON GROUPS BEING TORN ASUNDER.

[Stogieman]

I'm in the same boat... I used to spend small fortunes trying to re-unite groups, bars, even photo albums that had been torn apart (would you believe I had to pay an immense bribe to a German seller who had been tearing photos out of an Imperial Aviation album that included original photos featured in a number of books!! Eventually, with much expense and heartache, I was able to salvage most of the album, including the pages he had ripped and cut photos from, destroying the pilot's hand-written notes in the process.... The truly sad part was later on (and this IS what usually happens) not one other person cared!

[Henry 24th]

I agree whole heartedly. Groups should not be sold on a piece meal basis. It is despicable. There are also a number of dealers out there (especially ebay) selling period photographs on an individual basis, that are obviously removed from albums. How do you prevent that from occuring?

[JBFloyd]

Let me put on the "seller's" hat here momentarily.

Say I have what I thought was a group, but turns out to be a broken group, missing one key and identifiable piece. What are my options? (1) I can sell the group without reference to the missing item; (2) I can offer the group as a broken group, acknowledging that there is a numbered/named piece missing; (3) I can break up the group; (4) I can eat the group's cost and never dispose of it.

Option 1 brings up ethical questions.

Option 2 is ethically superior to the other two options.

Option 3 is ethically inferior to the other two, but puts beans on my table and allows me to recover my cost.

Option 4 is ethically neutral, but detrimental to my business.

So,

Option 1 is transparent to the next buyer (Seller says "I bought it just like that")

Option 2 sounds good, but reality indicates that very few collectors will buy a broken group, unless the individual pieces are unusual in themselves.

Option 3 is attractive, in that it recovers my investment.

Option 4 is unattractive.

Your short MBA course is "Businesses exist to make a profit". While it's wonderful to assume a perfect world of the ethically pure, reality indicates that a seller is going to sell his product in a manner that maximizes his return. As a seller, I am not in business to enhance someone's collection; I'm not in business to meet someone's expectations. Equally, I am not in business to be the repository for all the dodgy groups that exist.

I hate to see groups broken up and do as much as I reasonably can to avoid breaking them up, but I do not control the world and see no point in condemning someone who exercises his options (even if it grinds me as a collector). Most of us have a hard enough time controlling ourselves in the collecting world, let's not get too wrapped up in controlling what is beyond our scope.

All of this brings up a tangential question: Why do we condemn someone for beaking up a group, but only under certain circumstances? We never condemn a seller for selling an ordenspange with an EK2, Hohenzollern House Order and four other awards, when it is nearly a certainty that there was once an EK1 with the group. Or a Soviet group of decorations where there almost certainly a Red Star or OPW (we only get righteous when the award booklet is there).

Edited November 16, 2006 by JBFloyd

[NavyFCO]

To also play devil's advocate as Jeff did...

At what point can a group be broken?

First, the military items are split from an estate. With the entire estate, they form part of a family's history.

Second, the uniforms are split from the rest of the paper and medals. Most uniform collectors aren't all that interested in the non-uniform items.

Third, the photos and the "misc" documents are split from the medals with their documents, because most medals collectors aren't interested in piles of documents.

Finally, you have the medals and the award document left.

Would it not simply be a natural progression to next split the document from the group, and then split the group up, piece by piece?

I know this sounds utterly hienious. However, how many people on this forum own a complete Soviet award group that includes all of the person's documents? How about all of their documents AND their uniforms? What about all of their additional personal items????

I can say with great certainty that these groups are very, very, very few and far between.

Thus, at some point, every single one of our groups has gone through at least one, if not two, of the above steps, and those single awards we own have gone through all of the steps. In other words - at some point, 99.999% of groups out there were "broken" at some level.

Just a thought from another point of view.

Dave

P.S. NO, I DO NOT CONDONE BREAKING UP GROUPS, in case anyone should misunderstand my post!!!

[Riley1965]

Dave,

The closest to complete group is Colonel Fedorov. I'm missing his photo, I.D. and uniform. There's probably something I'm overlooking but i seem to have everything else. That's my only one out of Hundreds of Orders and medals.

Doc

[NavyFCO]

DO NOT BID ON GROUPS BEING TORN ASUNDER.

Why not? Here's my thought... If none of us bid on groups being broken up, they will be bid on by others who don't care about the awards and their history. If there are too few bidders on an item, it will sell for less than it's actual value.

Thus, that means that the pieces of the group not only went to someone who didn't care about their historical value, but didn't pay the actual value of the item either.

Here's the deal: It's a case of simple economics. If you don't buy (bid) on groups that are broken up, the seller still will sell the pieces, and chances are, they'll still make a profit off of them. Thus, the people selling the split groups aren't hurt by your boycotting of their auctions, and in the long run, you're simply losing out on what could potentially be a truly historic piece.

True, it's a shame that the group got split up, but isn't it at least somehow better to know that the items that were split from the group made it into the collection of someone who could appreciate them?

These metal tokens may well be the last remaining memory of that brave individual, and to discount buying them simply because we don't agree with the ethics of the seller is only hurting those of us who will appreciate their sacrifices for their country.

Just (yet another) different point of view....

Dave

[JimZ]

Well true...we all have pieces of groups in our collection. Especially those of us that like variations. Its not something one can or cannot condone. Its a fact of life and so many loose medals are running around and the sad fact is that they came out of groups which will never be re-united. And it is true, if a single award is already available for sale (seperated from its group), then why not buy it. We all do!

But what really angers me is when one blatantly has a group.... even if missing an award.... and he/she decides to split the group and blatantly auctions up all the pieces individually. A group of orders and medals that has been togther for say 50 odd years or more, again even if missing a piece, should not be split up!

There is no seller perspective as far as I am concerned other than profit. A full group sells better than a partial group which sells better than individual ODMs....usually. But if a group is split then this is a seller's way of ensuring that some dedicated person will come and pay all it takes to salvage the group and the seller maximises his profit.

As was rightly said, we are custodions of a piece of history and should treasure what we have until they pass into other loving hands. It is always a very sad day for me whenever I witness the actual break up of any group......... but never as sad as when the group is soviet and so much nearer to my heart. Especially when you consider that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, all that some people were left with were their medals.....

Jim

[Riley1965]

The bottom line is that we are the Guardians of Orders, Medals and badges that Someone earned for SERVICE and/or VALOR. Although I would like "complete groups", any medal in our custody is one with a good home.

Doc

[order_of_victory]

I must hold my hand up to buying a set of documetns of selar who did not relise the seril numbered medals went with the particular doc and did not relise that the documents were in the box until some weeks after the auction So what I am trying to say here is that some times sellars dont relise what they are selling if its not htere particular field

Order of Victory

Edited November 16, 2006 by order_of_victory

[Bryan]

Thus, that means that the pieces of the group not only went to someone who didn't care about their historical value, but didn't pay the actual value of the item either.

What is really the real value of an item? With all those inflated prices today, I wonder what could be the ? actual value ? of an item ?

It doesn't mean if I won a medal on eBay for the half of the dealer's price, that I actually don't care about the historical value of my medal. I just can't agree with you.

[Gerd Becker]

Well, i guess, i am going to collect entiry estates from Generals from now on...

I have never knowingly bought a piece, which belonged to a group, but i must say, i was temted to bid on the soviet pieces from the Mielke estate a few years ago, but i wasn?t entirely sure, if i want to collect soviet at that time. Now i wish, i did. A Red Banner to a German would be a centerpiece of my collection.

[Stogieman]

Here's why Dave... ORB to a General of the NKVD....

"Official replacement for S/B Type 1" per Igor

[Stogieman]

Now, I think it's really neat to have this.... but somebody(ies) else has all his other stuff

[Stogieman]

Reverse:

[NavyFCO]

Now, I think it's really neat to have this.... but somebody(ies) else has all his other stuff

So here's the question (once again playing devil's advocate here, not my own opinion).....

Would you have passed on this award given that it was split from a group? Obviously you didn't because you own it. It's true that it's rather bittersweet to only own one award from a particular group, but in the chance that the other awards have all but melted into the collections of other collectors who may or may not care about the history of the person behind the award, at least that single Red Banner is being cherished and cared for and the memory of that man is being preserved through that.

Like I said, it's bittersweet to a fault, but I don't think any of us would have passed on buying it simply because the other awards are out there and they aren't with it.

Now my actual opinion...

In all seriousness, in my personal experience, I regularly passed on groups that were missing an award back in the day when groups were cheap and plentiful. I was not interested in anything other than a group that was entirely complete, even walking away from some technically "complete" award groups that were simply missing their jubilee awards.

Now good groups have all but dried up and I'm grateful for the few that I kept in my collection. What I wouldn't do to turn back the hands of time and take in some of those groups that I was too haughty to own previously.

I have restored my share of groups (one particular group, to an admiral) took close to five years to reassemble, buying one auction here, and there, on eBay and elsewhere. By the time I got done with it it was an exceedingly robust group that I moved along to a new and loving home for it.

At the same time, I've seen several groups that I researched and sold later split up! I've even had the chance to buy back some of these awards after being split, but it would have ripped my heart out to look at the remnants of the group that I once owned as whole and realized that it might never again be as how I owned it, so I passed.

For Soviet.... I think you misunderstood my sentence that I wrote, as I worded it poorly and the sarcasm that was included in it didn't convey well. What I was simply trying to portray was "the extreme" where none of us bid on say, a particular Red Banner because it was being split from a group. In our self-righteousness, we would withhold our bids in order to simply prove a point to the seller that he could not get financial gain by splitting the group.

At that point, our hypothetical auction (or whatever) would close at a price well below what the value of the award actually was, and quite possibly the award would move off to one of the more unscrupulous dealers who would then simply use it as a platform to make financial gain from and sell it to someone else.

Basically, in the end, none of us would "win" in that situation... We might prove a momentary point to a seller, who probably wouldn't be changed in his ways, and the medal would be wisked off by someone only interested in what material gain they could get from selling the medal, and quite possibly the medal (and its associated history) would be lost because WE WHO RESEARCH AWARDS and appreciate the person behind the medal looked down our "righteous" noses at the "despicability" of the seller and wanted to prove a point to someone.....

In other words, we'd all lose out. We wouldn't make any lasting impact on the seller, and in the long run, the award - and the person behind the award - may well (and I emphasize MAY) be lost to history....

Remember this: every single award belonged to someone who earned it, and it is up to US to preserve that history. Even if we don't like the ethics of a seller and disagree with how they might run their business, do not look poorly upon the award, as looking poorly on the award itself is failing to appreciate the person to whom it belonged.

Just my three cents....

Dave

[JimZ]

I think we should not lose sight of the fact that most of our individual ODMs are part of groups long since split up. Of course, if a group was totally shatterred 10 or 15 years ago and now, individual awards are changing hands, then there is nothing to be said about that. These lose awards for the basis of most of our collections....basically most of what had been undone cannot be done back....except in exceptional cases.

If the ORB in question was on sale, if the research show it belonged to a group of another 15 orders, then I would myself find no objection to buying it, assuming there is no evidence that the a present existing group is being split at the time. And I would like to think that if at one stage I found out that such an award in my posession is missing from a group then I would gladly consider exchanging it or otherewise trading it for a similar or other ODM. After all, I too am looking for some orders to reunite some of my groups!!

I however do find myself in a quandry when my participation in an auction could be part of splitting a group of medals. On the one had I'd hope my bids could salvage the group. On the other hand I know my bids will probably help fragment the group even further. And in the end it is likely that the group will anyways be split!!!

So what is ethical to me as a collector....

a) To try to salvage the group? - Possibly expensive and possibly more damaging than good

b) To boycott the seller? - I am not the only buyer out there...lets face it

c) To apeal to the sellers conscience? - Been there done that too many times and sadly this does not always work especially when, in spite of my real polite appeal, I am told to mind my own sweet business and not interfere...and if I want the group then i can jolly well bid on the items!! (like that was the point!!)

I think there is no real solution to this and all of these options are all correct and yet, usually futile!

Jim

[alanirvine]

[attachmentid=61082]

Gentlemen,

If it would help, thanks to one of the members of this forum, we managed to combine two Orders that were previously broken up.

He saw on the data base that I had Bogdan Khmelnitsky #1338 and contacted me about a trade. He had Nevsky # 17835 that once belonged together.

I traded an extra ORB T1V3, Mirror reverse for the Nevsky.

Alan

Edited November 17, 2006 by alanirvine

[alanirvine]

[attachmentid=61083]

The Nevsky,

Alan