Buy the item, not the "story"......

[Stogieman]

......... but what happens when the item tells the story, or perhaps tells only part of the story? What does this ribbon bar tell you? It was recently sold by Detlev Niemann in Germany and the photos used to illustrate this thread are courtesy of him.

[Stogieman]

What about this example? What "story" does this bar tell you?????????

[Stogieman]

How about now? Does this clear things up??

[Stogieman]

Unfortunately, these were all sold as individual pieces..... perhaps this will really help you to "see the light"..

[Stogieman]

Still have not caught the moral............... OK, I'll make it easy, these 3 together make you say.............

[landsknechte]

OK, I'll make it easy, these 3 together make you say.............

It's far less tacky to just wear a second row of ribbons than it is to weld two ribbon bars together?

[Stogieman]

Chris is correct. All the bars shown belonged to the same man. The double-row set was stone-cold mint and doesn't appear to have ever been worn. The other interesting thing is the "close-enough" ribbon from (???) used to represent his Centennary Medal.

A second set of bars, double row, was broken. The top row was sold with the medal bar itself, which I will post tonight with the bottom row sold off the following week.....

[Stogieman]

And here's the medal bar that started the whole thing. Same man, sold with upper row of 2 rows of ribbon!

[Stogieman]

Now, to me, the really interesting thing here is to look at all the ribbon bars and the medal bar and notice how each incarnation of this man's history was mounted just a little bit different! He just couldn't seem to make up his mind whether to be "Austrian" or "German"

[Stogieman]

Unfortunately........ the first week, someone else beat me to the punch on the medal bar and half ribbon bar...

The next week, someone (entirely different!!) beat me out of the loooooonnnnnggggg ribbon bar, but I was able to grab the double row set and the hack-job 9X one.

The second row bar remains unsold..........

[Stogieman]

I will also add........ owning many groups of bars that I worked very hard to save and in the end being the only person (really seems that way) who cares that it's a group, I find no fault, no foul in this group being broken up by the original seller.