Imperial Russia St Vladimir 4th Class - Is this real? What is a reasonable price for this?

[Oxy]

Hi

Offered for sale on Ebay for a crazy price, but the same thing is on offer for much less GBP2k elsewhere!!!

A lot of pictures are availabe at:

http://www.ebay.com.sg/itm/Russia-Russian-Order-St-Vladimir-4th-class-RRR-/300638421979?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45ff7243db

Is it real? What i a reasonable price for this (obviously USD11K is crazy but perhaps GBP2K is also too much) ?

[Jaybo]

Russian Imperial stuff is a very tricky area right now (and has been for at least 10 years or so). There a few real experten in this group so you should pay attention to their imput. It 'looks' authentic to me from the pictures but I suspect that there is alot of faking going on in this genre now. The Russians have been re-discovering their Imperial roots and are flush with cash. The prices for Russian Imperial stuff have sky-rocketed in the last 10-15 years or so.

As to whether the prise is reasonable or not, if its real and you want it, only you can answer that question. By the way, Dmiitri Markov has 3 St. Vlads 4th Class in gold for auction in New York on January 5. The opening reserve bids are $7,000 for one with its box, $6,000 for the other two. My suspicion is that they will go for much more than that. Best of luck.

[Oxy]

Yes prices are bound to have increased over the last 15 years. Not sure about the last 5 years though and there are tales of St Vladimir's under USD2K, gold of cause (the actual value of gold in it is actually couple of hundred dollars).

St. Vladimirs I suppose are popular due to abundance of films from that period and almost invariably all men in those films wear these orders. They actually were quite common and you could literally buy the civilian one (without swards) by making charitable donations.

With regard to Dmitri Markov's prices well they do appear to be over the top. There is another St Vladimir - probably even 3rd class that has been on sale with no success for more then a year -

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Russian-Imperial-St-Vladimir-order-badge-swords-/220653494289?_trksid=p5197.m7&_trkparms=algo%3DLVI%26itu%3DUCI%26otn%3D4%26po%3DLVI%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D4960572199487743658

And there is most certainly a fake in King's Lynn from official coins dealer!!! for GBP485. 1235. Order of St. Vladimir. Second class neck badge - plain reverse. (NEF) £485 http://military-medals.co.uk/newgrandlist.htm

So yes it is difficult to ascertain value of these but I need to do it as considering buying one of these as an investment and also wearing for various costumed Balls.

[WRANGEL]

The only problem with this award being the price (unless you are a member of the Bratva that is to say the Russian mafia and have plenty of cash without knowing what to do with it), otherwise everything is correct, marks from Eduard and Varvara Dietwald, Hallmarks for gold and SPB, even the ribbon seems original.

Best regards

Bill

[WRANGEL]

Sorry Oxy,

but I think that all orders, badges on sale by Berg983 are fakes.

Cheers

Bil

[paul wood]

Sorry Oxy,

but I think that all orders, badges on sale by Berg983 are fakes.

Cheers

Bil

Yes it is a nice 4th class Eduard Vladimir with the original crossed ribbon $5,000-7000 would be a reasonable price but more that that it is starting to become really expensive (or at least at 2008 prices). At least it is genuine compared to most of the nitrogenous waste offered on E-scam

Paul