Hungary Sale of an exceptionally rare, cased award.

[Gordon Craig]

Gents,

This weekend there was considerable excitement in Vienna and Budapest when a cased V?r?s Z?szl? ?rdemrend, 1953 (Order of Merit of the Red Flag, 1953) came up for auction in Vienna. The exceitement was caused because only two of these awards were ever presented. I became involved in the exceitemnt quite by chance. My wife and I were visiting a friend in Vienna and Thursday morning, the 14th of June we were walking through the Grabben when I decided to visit a store there that deals in stamps, coins and medals. They had two catalogues in the window for auctions that weekend. One for Austrian-Hungarain WWI cap badges. (the ones that were pinned to the sides of the headgear) and a much larger catalogue for the medal auction. I bought a copy of the large medals one and upon reading it discovered the V?r?s Z?szl? ?rdemrend, 1953 listed. I wasn't sure what I was dealing with from the picture and the German writ-up and didn't have any reference books with me so I sent Cahrles an email. He responded with a great set of scans from the Large Medals Book and I came to the conclusion as to which medal they were offering. I had suspected it was not described correctly in the catalogue and this proved to be correct once I received the scans. Charles made some suggestions as to the value and I went to the auction house the next day, Firday, to take a close look. The medal was flawless without any enamel damage and the case was also correct for this award. Not feeling up to trying to bid in an auction in German I placed an absentee bid as soon as I had reveiwed the medal. This turned out to be an error as the final bid was for Euros 1050.00 which meant I was the second highest bidder. Another collecting story that I thought you might enjoy. Here is a picture of the medal I almost owned.

Regards,

Gordon

[Gordon Craig]

Now on to other things. The large medals book simply says this award was on "multipiece construction". This is true, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it never ocured to me while I was inspecting the medal to photograph it. The back is smooth. From the back, the medal seems to be made of two sections. On outer section which goes all of the way around the medal. This section is not very wide. Approximately 1/4 inch. The centre section is smooth, as I remember it, and totally fills the space between the outside section.

Here is the link tot the results of the auction of the Hungarian items.

http://www.hdrauch.com/auction/stamps/inde...a9c77d82fd4738a

Regards,

Gordon

Edited June 18, 2007 by Gordon Craig

[hunyadi]

I was rooting for you Gordon!

[Ulsterman]

wow-the one that got away. So the final bid was 1100 euros?

[Gordon Craig]

Ulsterman,

The final bid was 1050.00 Euros.

Regards,

Gordon