Group with "Service to the Homeland" and Red Star

[JensF.]

Thanks. But where can you find them for 80 $??? In Germany you can be glad to get one for 150 Euros and some dealers are selling them for over 300!

[Dave]

Originally posted by Majorpayne
Thanks. But where can you find them for 80 $??? In Germany you can be glad to get one for 150 Euros and some dealers are selling them for over 300!

I have personally sold them for $80-$85 each, and I just looked at two dealers websites and they had them available for $100 and $110 each. They are a pain to sell (or so my experience has been) and I've seen them for as low as $75 on e!

--Dave

[Ed Maier]

This is a very interesting thread. I do not have the level of experience in dealing with new groups as I do with WWII groups but several issues come to mind.

1) First and most important, what does a faker have to gain in faking this group. Even with the added Homeland 3rd, you're not going to get a lot more money for the document and Red Star. These are hard to sell in the US and prices are higher in Europe (especially Russia) for this Order. But it doesn't seem logical to waste your time creating this fake when you could do others which would be easier to sell.

2) The serial numbers on the Orders look OK to me.

3) I do not worry about serial number ranges, especially with the later awards. The USSR was not the most organized place in the world at the best of times, and serial number ranges are all over the place. With an Order in which we have very little information about award date/serial number ranges, how can we be sure at what time a serial number was awarded or not? Many more were made then awarded, and they were not awarded consecutively. Just look at the Order of Glory 1st Class. There are huge gaps of unawarded serial numers between 1980 and 2300. And then again from 2400 to 2600 and 2701 to 2900 but almost all of the 2300s and 2600s were awarded. If you have crazy gaps like this in an Order with a base mintage of 3900, imagine the gaps in an Order with over 140,000 created. It has to be crazy and illogical.

This really doen't help decide the issue of fake or real, but this would pass the first "smell" test for me. I would want to research the group and see what could be found, but if you are not paying much more money for the group then you would if the group was seperate, what do you have to loose?

Just my opinion,
Ed M.