Belgium GIANT Medals... for Horses & Cabbages

[Guest Rick Research]

The Traveling Museum came by yesterday so I was able to scan these HUGE medals, all from the same source-- I presume a very successful farmer who exhibited across the three nations' borders from the 1890s up to the First World War. But aside from the ones mentioning horses/breeding horses-- and of a size that they were WORN by the horse (?) not sure what the agricultural/market ones might have been for-- perhaps also horses?

Luxemburg on far let is 52mm high and 42mm wide-- just some white metal alloy

Top left from Brussels is 55mm wide and solid silver

Top right also from Brussels is silvered bronze

Bottom left is 42mm solid silver

Bottom right from Arnhem is 40mm and perhaps German silver

and the explanatory reverses. I like the way French makes "horse breeders" into what Babelfisch would transform into "English" as "horse reproducers!"

I'm sure the "value" of these is simply whatever the weight of the real silver ones might be, but we are wondering from the sheer SIZE of them if they might have been attached to a champion horse's harness, the way the English decorate their beats with horse brasses?

[Christian L]

To my knowledge neither on horses nor on other "winning" animals medals itself where bestowed on those agricultural competitions.

They "only" got either some kind of sash (BLUE) or in most cases a small button with ribbons to it (YELLOW) - as on the attached pic.

Though the Medals where awarded only to the owners.

In quantity, these agricultural-competition awards are not wearable.

Those wearable ones, as you show, are worn on a long ribbon around the neck (like the big russian "for zeal" medal or the big "Herzog Alfred" medal from sax-coburg-gotha).

And as these where never intended to be worn on medalbars, the size and also weight was ok - to wear as neck award.