Hammer & Plough Red Star Cockade

[DougD]

While these things are tough to nail down 100%, if it were offered to me I'd take the risk and grab it.

DougD

[gc1909]

Hi to everyone dear fellow collectors, I found this topic in this wonderful forum and, given the fact that I'm dealing with a similar situation, I thought it was a good idea to write you here.

Honestly the price of the items I'm going to show you is really high for me, but anyway I would appreciate suggestions.

Well, the items I'm talking about are the two big stars at the bottom of the picture.

The price is 15.000 roubles ($ 489) for the one on the left and 10.000 roubles ($ 326) for the right one. The collector assure, naturally, that they are genuine original ones. The fact is that thay are not so well conserved, but anyway I do not have any idea about the normal price for such items.

Si I would like to ask you an help with that (are they original? is the price fair?), considering the fact that very probably in the near future I'll not buy these items, but I would love to.

Thank you very much

[Commissar]

Hi GC1909!
Welcome to the forums, I'm sure you'll love it here! :)

Those look really old, I'm no expert on these hammer and plow cockades, but they may be genuine? They definitely have a great look to them in my eyes, personally I like the top left badge, it looks fantastic.

Lonny.

[DougD]

All have the prongs broken off? Even if all real I'd say overpriced considering they all seem to have the prongs removed.

[deValcourt]

I think Doug picked the right word - "removed." That's what looks like happened. There is almost no trace on a couple that there ever were prongs.

But, as Lonny said, they do look nice. Whether they look $400 nice or not? I'd say no. Way too expensive for the condition.

Phillip

[gc1909]

Thanks for the nice welcome Commissar! I'm really enjoying this forum!

Well, thanks to all for the comments. I agree with all of you; severl time I promised myself that I would have focused only on hat badges and cokades of the Soviet Union and that I wouldn't have searched for ones from the RSSFR. But all the times I see a red star with the first red army symbol I can't do anything but look at the price and at the quality of the object!

But the point is exactly the prongs, there seems to be quite any remaining of them. More over, I do agree with the fact that glossy stars are normally reproductions but on these two items the quality of the red colour is really poor (few remainings on the left one and nothing on the right one). Of course I consider the age of this anyway great items, but giver these facts I also think that they are really overpriced!
(anyway I'm going to conclude in these days some quite expansive deals for some great soviet and russian embroidered hat badges..!!)

[desantnik]

I would imagine it's fairly easy to fake such gross patina as these pieces. Since these were irregularly made with poor quality control almost 100 years ago, it's possible that these were made recently and then "aged." They could have been ground-dug, but for one person to have such a collection with similar type aging, it's suspicious.

[CtahhR]

I go by the saying "When in doubt, leave it out". Even if something is real but you can't persuade yourself so there's no real point of having it in your collection preying on your mind "Did I get ripped off?".

[ph3s]

welcome to SAF, Hammer & Plow Red Star my favourite ones. As for the picture

The star in the garland is a badge of Red Commander, nearly the first badge for classification(ranks) in RKKA, I would even say it wasn't RKKA it was Red Guard yet. A for the prise, it's up to you, cos recovering(I bet those are dug-pieces) is a question and big question is is it real or not. Problem with those they were made by all sort of jeweller and artels, No standards, no watermarks, lack of info, only pictures and photos.

I know a person who is hunting for this badge for the last 6-7 mounts. So I told him, get yourself a newly made piece, beat it up a little, then bury in a pot with plant, fill it with compost, water it for a year and you will get exactly the same dug out badge, no one would be able to say that the piece is not genuine and you will save yourself some money. :D

[gc1909]

Deat ph3s, I found an item which could exactly be the product of the operation you described in your message! :D

If you look at the attached pictures you can see that really not so much remained of this star. The fact is that the price is really yummy, $ 22.

For the star attached in the third picture the price would be $ 105.

Again, dear fellow collectors I would gently ask for your opinions, because I can't stop searching for such a badge, but I would really like to make the good choice(s).

Thanks!