Imperial Russia Ebay jokes

[Eugene]

Description on Ebay: "This particular example sold to a Georgian collector at a European auction house a few years ago for $2,000 plus buyer's premium."

Few years ago nobody has sold such order for more than $200.

[Guest Rick Research]

I doubt Chuck thinks it is funny.

But the world's strangest award:

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=1032&hl=Tamara

has come up MANY times scattered about these pages--

it's hard to decide where to place a 1919+ German-manufactured decoration named after an Orthodox Saint and used as the former unit badge by Muslim Tsarist deserters, being only ever authorized on paper as a national award by the atheist Menshevik government of Georgia to reward the German forces blocking their own ally Turkey's expansion headed for Azerbaijan's oil before the Bolsheviks in Moscow and the British from India could...

well.

Classifying what subforum to place these in is difficult.

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=5097&hl=Tamara

But although the Democratic Republic of Georgia was NOT a Central Power, any more than Finland was, both those countries gave--or at least authorized in Tiflis's case-- awards TO Germans during 1918.

There is, unfortunately, quite a lot of completely wrong misinformation out there, including in recent print from Georgia, completely ignoring (or ignorant of) the now 80+ years of German documentation on this weird, weird award.

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=3763&hl=Tamara

Prices don't concern me. I don't collect for "investment," and I'm too poor to speculate. Accurate information is what matters.

People can decide for themselves what something is "worth" to them-- but only when they know what its significance really was.

Between current Georgian fantasists who do not have a CLUE and irresponsible old Werlich 35 years or so ago announcing flatly that "most" of them out there were "fake" (What "most" is what I'd like to know! There have never been more than the TRICKLE of these out there in all these years that would match up with the actual number really awarded and... the ones coming out of virgin attic groups, of course, match up as 1919 made so-called "3 class" examples.), "in print" little serves reality as LIVED

by an Old Collector Specialist like me.