Soviet Small Soviet group

[Bryan]

Hello Gentlemans. I have just joined this wonderfull site where there is a lot of possible discussion going on & I'm happy to see that you have a Soviet & Eastern Block Militaria & Awards forum.

I would like to start the discussion with a small Soviet group that I recently bought. I would like to know if there is a way to know if this is a "made-up" group or a part of an original group. I do not have any document with the medals.

Thank you very much for any help !

Soviet

Edited October 11, 2005 by Soviet

[Bryan]

Well, I have just read that thread : http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=2459 and I guess I will never know without researching.

[Gerd Becker]

Hello Bryan,

nice to see you here. I have seen that Medalbar and thought about to buy it, as the price was good, but i already have two Type4 Orders of the Red Banner and i want to have other variations first. But you got it for a good price probably.

It has a little chance to belong together, but as you said yourself, only research will tell for sure.

all the best,

Gerd

[Guest Rick Research]

The Red Banner could be part of the annual long service awards mass bestowal of November 1953, or from early 1954--I don't have enough numbers to be sure for then. That Valor Medal is certainly one of the last numbered ones awarded, 1948-53, and the Military Merit Medal without number suggests a 10 years long service piece from the 1950s on.

An aluminum medal bar mounting like this would date from no earlier than circa 1957, but of course snce these medals were worn often by veterans, it could have been remounted and had rows upon rows below it.

Absolutely correct-- there is no way to tell if these go together without paying for research.

I never bothered with many of the groups and partial groups I got in the late 1990s because THEN, the awrads were worth less money than research cost so it was not "cost effective" to do it. Now prices on the awards have surged beyond research costs, so a good group, or one promising interesting results, is worth doing.

I don't think I'd do so with a group THIS incomplete though, unless you simply want to do every single Red Banner.

At least in a group with an Orders Book and some medal award booklets, there are some clues about what the recipient was.

Even WITH an Orders book, it's still a gamble, sometimes. I have an Orders Book with an UNSTAMPED photo of the recipient as a Quartermaster Lieutenant Colonel 1948+... of his FIVE Orders, I only have TWO. Everything else is missing. Maybe the photo is good and he put it in later, or maybe it was added to "improve" the saleability of the lot. Only research will tell. I THINK the two Orders I got with the book are indeed what belong with this officer-- a late war OPW2nd and a 30 years second (but typically initial-award type) Red Banner.

Only paying for the research will tell me if I got a phony photo or awards added to a book. So it's waaaaaay down on my list. I've already paid for ONE quartermaster, and Mark Mekh was enough to scare me off of THEM for a loooooooooooooong time!

[Bryan]

Thanks guys for your answer. I guess I will not do the research on this small group. I will wait to get something better in my collection to research it.