Mongolia Mongolian phaleristics

[Ed_Haynes]

Just got an interesting e-mail from one of the major Ulanbaatar dealers, well known to many of us. He was planning to attend the OMSA meetings in August. But his ability to attend was going to be contingent on his finding enough high-end items to sell at the OMSA to cover his costs. He was not able to find these items and so will not be attending. Thus, the pipeline is dry or nearly so?

Word on research will change things, but until then I fear the deafening silence on this sub-forum reflects the state of the larger game.

[Lingqi]

Just got an interesting e-mail from one of the major Ulanbaatar dealers, well known to many of us. He was planning to attend the OMSA meetings in August. But his ability to attend was going to be contingent on his finding enough high-end items to sell at the OMSA to cover his costs. He was not able to find these items and so will not be attending. Thus, the pipeline is dry or nearly so?

Word on research will change things, but until then I fear the deafening silence on this sub-forum reflects the state of the larger game.

That is good news. I guess it may be hard to find high-end items, but the normal ones are still plenty in the market. The most of collectors are not able to afford high-end items. so the prices of normal medals and orders are not likely to go up.

[Vatjan]

I believe the deafening silence is mostly due to the fact that there already is an enormous amount of information on there.

No use in posting an 732th Polar star or a 1234th herders' badge, (lovely as they may be) unless there is some interesting information to go with them.

Research would surely liven up a bit the sub forum. Although I'm afraid that, seeing most orders given after 1945 are long service awards, they will not provide very riveting citations.

Jan

[Stogieman]

I'm not so sure Ed.. I think so much information has been presented in some of these sub-forums, that the number of collectors that are willing, are already participating and we have created a rather special little niche for what time will show as an important and serious study of these areas of phaleristics. The old "if you build it, they will come" theory. I think there are probably many interested parties who just have not found us yet. However, there have been some recent changes to the forum regarding search engines, allowances for "crawlers", etc. that will (eventually) improve traffic.... Sure, time will tell... in the interim I think each and every one of you should be proud to be the ones on the cutting edge! Bravo!

[Chris Boonzaier]

Word on research will change things, but until then I fear the deafening silence on this sub-forum reflects the state of the larger game.

Only natural... the guys have been collecting Mongolian for 10 or so years.... all of a sudden there is a new Forum...

Then a mad scrambell while 5-10 guys post the results of 10 years of collecting over a period of two months........

After that... it is waaaaay slower...

[Ed_Haynes]

Only natural... the guys have been collecting Mongolian for 10 or so years.... all of a sudden there is a new Forum...

I am not sure many outside of Mongolia have been collecting that long in any serious fashion.

Still, many good points here. Someone could do a sociology, or psychology, or even economics study of Mongolian phaleristics?

[Guest Rick Research]

It's all Dr. Battushig's "fault." Singlehandedly, he set off a global stampede because after years of looking at exotic, yet absolutely "unknowable" items mingled in from our then-usual ex-Soviet sources there was

ACTUAL INFORMATION. Like what the NAMES of these awras were, for starters!

"the earth was waste and void; darkness covered the abyss" as it was written ... "and then there was light."

Amazing what DATA will do for a subject.

A similar birthing is going on now with Fidelista Cuban material. We are operating there in an absolute void of facts and information. Unlike YOU guys, there has been no Great Flood of material onto the market (as seemed so ... imminent 13 months ago )

YET.

But there will be. And this time the language will not be a problem... though here's me with my outdated World War Three That Never (thank God) Happened language "skills" and just about the only European language I NEVER had was... Spanish.

Language is still holding back Mongolian, the way it did with the much more accessible (by comparison) Russian. There ARE enough of us around who can READ Russian to have overcome that-- look how popular, and interesting, Russian paperwork has become.

Yet that has still not happened with Mongolian. How many award document groups have been preserved? Not many. So there is still lots of "lateral room" for Mongolian to develop. But nobody can READ the stuff!!!

There's been very little Mongolian UNIFORM collecting, for instance, unlike Soviet.

Though there does seem to be a dearth of the wearing-everything personnel file photos so beloved of Soviet bureaucracy, that is an area of Mongolian that could still be a sideline which does not involve automobile-payment sized purchases.

I remember very clearly the Mass Extinction of Soviet stuff six years ago. Got me back into Imperial German, that did. But look at where prices came back at!

So this too shall pass.

In the meantime, nobody seems to be collecting Czech Communist stuff. And where on earth did all those garish Rumanian awards with the paste sparklies GO that used to be in piles on militaria show tables? I put my snoot in the air and walked on by TH'em and now THOSE have disappeared, too.

So the Age Of Acquisition has ended...

NOW begins the Age Of Detailed Study.

[Riley1965]

I look forward to adding more Mongolian ODMs to my collection and the future research!!! MMMM!! R e s e a r c h !!!

Doc