Damaged, Repair, Clean, Preserve Soviet Awards And Documents.

[Bob]

To paraphrase somebody: collecting medals is like sex, the dirtier the better.

Besides, I'm lazy so prefer not to spend time cleaning

[GabrielMk3]

Interesting metaphor... :chuckle

I kinda agree. But I think that, if I could, I'd try to get two of each medal, order, title and whatsoever.

I'd keep one of each in a normal cabinet or something, and the other ones I would carefully polish and restore to it's "right outta mint" condition, and make it shine as it once shone, and put them in a vacuum chamber/pressurized container (with a polycarbonate window), so it won't gain patina.

Thus it would be expensive, it would be the ultimate collection.

[UQWozza]

The imperial War Museum in London has this advice:

IWM Home Page > Your History > found it in the attic? > Caring for medals

Here is advice from the Department of Veteran's Affairs (Australia), including the cleaning of ribbons:

How to clean medals

Cleaning medal ribbons

Simon

[deValcourt]

The imperial War Museum in London has this advice:

IWM Home Page > Your History > found it in the attic? > Caring for medals

Here is advice from the Department of Veteran's Affairs (Australia), including the cleaning of ribbons:

How to clean medals

Cleaning medal ribbons

Simon

I see: use only an old tooth brush and Q-tips ("cotton buds")! In all seriousness, good information. Thank you Simon.

[travel-north]

Silver solder was used - never tin so black means post-Mint work.

Does it mean that all genuine medals with black soldering like in the picture attached are either type 1 medals that had additional soldering done by the owner to fix the ring because of damage or later type medals that were remade to look like type 1 medals?

[travel-north]

I just wanted to add that the picture of the ring is of a genuine type 1 medal that on the reverse has a sickle with a handle extending to the other side of the blade. I'm posting a picture to illustrate what I mean. And as far as I know only type 1 medals can have such a sickle on the reverse. So there is no possibility that it could be a type 2 or type 3 medal converted to type 1.

[Shocktrooper]

Hello everybody,

I just purchased this one for a couple of bucks - it seems that someone was a little bit angry with Josif Stalin at the end ...

Jens

[desantnik]

Agreed - that was far from accidental.

[Will]

That is VERY cool !
A real piece of "personal" history.

[Shocktrooper]

Hello,

I just want to present my latest purchases. I have been looking for a long time for some nice, genuine serial - numbered combat medals.

Jens