Any ideas?

[TakeshiKovacs]

Anyone have any clue what this is? Been looking everywhere and can't find anything. Perhaps I'm not looking in the right places?

[CtahhR]

It looks to be a fire-fighters' graduation Badge. Can't pin down "PPD" exactly.
Most likely dates from the late 1940's and Moscow made.

[desantnik]

I believe the badge to be of more recent provenance...

[CtahhR]

This example is of course a fake - the lack of wear on the reverse and general "whitewash" patina are a dead giveaway.

Soviet Graduation Badges were reinstituted (after being halted after the Revolution) in 1946 so even if original it's no "war time" piece.

[TakeshiKovacs]

Found it! The PPD comment got me thinking...SOVIET RUSSIAN ORDER MEDAL BADGE PPD, RARE (07/02/2011)

back looks fake on this one, but the rest seems legit. Thats assuming the one in the link is legit. I honestly dont have a clue.

Of course thats apparently through ebay, so who knows how accurate that is. argh..

[CtahhR]

I'd also say the one shown there is also fake. The "similar items" which look to be from the same seller (by the background) are also fakes.

[TakeshiKovacs]

How do you know? Not meaning to question you, i'm completely new to all of this (and becoming obsessed lol) and trying to learn a bit. It seems like a very frustrating hobby heh. So far all I know is to mostly avoid stuff from the Ukraine/ =P

[CtahhR]

When you stare at and handle the real items enough very often a fake will jump out as a fake instantly. There can be some very obvious tells on the poorer quality fakes.

I only trust one dealer in Ukraine but I haven't bought from him in years (if he's still in the game). There is so much junk out there it is overwhelming. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland and Cyprus all well known for fakes but you'll find them oozing out of almost anywhere in the world. There are very, very few dealers I trust not to try and pull a quick one. It can be a real gamble and nothing is off limit to fakers, from the highest awards to most mass produced minimal value bits.

Remember that greed is the main incentive of most and not the preservation of the the honour or prestige of the awards or their recipients.

[TakeshiKovacs]

Any help you can give in directing me towards good dealers would be SO helpful. Honestly I'm looking at more common, easy to find pieces to start because i'm not exactly rich. But you're right, theres junk everywhere. It's already driving me crazy.

At the moment there are some things I don't mind being "authentic" or not. But if I can get he real thing, seems silly not to.

Alot of the old pins seem to be reproductions but there also seem to be thousands of different ones with different variations. Has anyone ever comiled a database of those? I see alot of military award databases but nothing on the plain old propaganda.

Ok I'll stop now. =)

[CtahhR]

I'd advise giving Desantnik a message. You can trust him 1000% and I'm sure he'll be able to help you in some way.

On the subject of Badges there are vast resources. There are so many Badges out there from national awards, ministerial awards, veteran and other organisations, separate SSRs and ASSRs without mentioning more local regional bits and of course those priced bits made to "collect" which were never awarded to anyone.

Have a look through the Badge section of the forum and you'll find a vast array of real Soviet awards. For more localised SSR awards look in the "Republics Of The Soviet Union" section. There are thousands of them. I'll post some more "later".