Jubilee Medal "40 Years Of The Armed Forces Of The U.S.S.R.".

[otlichnik]

Just one more comment. Yes, the chance for screw-ups and mistakes was there, especially in the Raivonkoms.

BUT, any error, such as a lack of stamp or signature, or a very odd date should always be a "red flag" - a warning of a POTENTIAL problem.

It should make you check and re-check the entire document, award and/or group with greater care.

If there are other suspicious things - other "red flags" such as a poor medal strike, the wrong feel of paper, a bad stamp or suspicious stamp, etc. then beware the item.

If on the other hand everything else looks good then it may well be a simple error.

What I am trying to say is that while errors do exist, especially in the huge Soviet system, sometimes it will still be a fake or altered item and we can not just ignore the error because some are genuine. Always be vigilant.

Take the un-numbered, but otherwise filled in and aged NKVD and KGB badge award documents. They look so good that I acepted the first few I saw as genuine errors. Then I saw more and more, and began to look closer. Now it is clear that every one of the un-numbered NKVD and KGB award documents is fake.

Luckily, on medal docments the news is not quite that bad.

Shawn