Stolen Awards.

[mcwirsk]

Dear Guys

This is a serious problem in South Africa. We have 1 major coin show every year in each province. In the old days collectors of medals were asked to exhibit and in return were allowed to advertise that they collect/buy these type of items.

A few years ago a fellow collector placed his name cards on his exhit stating that he buys these items. A few days later he was paid a visit and cleaned out. The items did not hit the market in South Africa. In our monthly society news letters they no longer show who brought items to show but rather state he area he is from.

In South Africa life is cheap and if you are robbed there is a good chance you wil be assaulted or killed too. This is the changing face of the world.

What concerns me is that in the above case the medals did not hit the market. As far as we know. So where are they? Melted down? or was is robbery to order????

We all are aware of the recent robbery to a dealer. have these items hiy the market????

Chilling factor.

My last 2 cents worth.

As collectors we like to show off the items we manage to get. If we all close up (and lock up) then it will kill our hobby.

I suppose we all need to be careful.

regards from a chilly South Africa

Munroe

[scook17]

So Dmitry got off lightly when they turned him over. By the sound's of things, it could have been a lot worse.

However, I suspect what happens in most cases, Dmitry's case being the exception, is most of this stuff is stolen by common criminals who just know it has 'some' value and will sell it down the local market for whatever they can get.

Kind Regards,
Shane Cook.

[Chris]

Shane

That is the problem; if the wrong person gets to know about it you are in trouble, as they do know the value.

I treat the subject the same way as my pocket book; I keep it close and do not flash it in public.

The ones that do not know the value are the old widows and maybe young family of deceased who have what they believe the odd trinket with a daft Soviet emblem on it.

These people get targeted with flyers through the letterbox offering prices that are far below what they are worth (not a fair asking price for what they intend to sell it for) but to these poor people an extra 10 dollars in manya from the heavens.

This is another form of robbery.

Dmitry sounds like an organised payback.

Chris

[new world]

Very sad story about Admiral Kholostakov

But there's a sequel to the old murder case. After Admiral's awards were recovered - they were kept at the Museum of the Fleet. With such bad history to these awards one would expect from Russians to keep an eye on the Admiral's uniform. No exactly.

As tragic as it is - the awards disappeared again - they were stolen from the Museum in the 1990's...

William

[new world]

I just came accross this article.

A 25 yo student form Moscow met Academic Alexandr Krasovsky on the May demonstration, introduced himself as a journalist and Academik invited him to his apartment.

Alexandr Krasovsky's top member of Academy of Sciences and used to teach at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy, where Yuri Gagarin was one of his students (and where most of the Cosmonauts and Generals went to study).

Back in may during the first vistit to the Academic's apartment "the journalist" managed to steal a Hero of SU Gold Star which belonged to Krasovsky.

The student came back in June, locked the old man in the bathroom and took his Uniform with the awards and the notebook computer. Mr Krasovsky slipped on the wet floor and suffered head injury that resulted in his death.

The thief was lately captured by the police in Tula region. Unfortunately he already mmanaged to sell the uniform with the awards and the laptop.

By the Russian estimates the market price of all Acedemic Krasovsky's awards is equal to the price of a new car in Russia.

Acedemic Alexandr Krasovsky was 75 years old...

Here's a link in Russian:

http://www.kp.ru/daily/23050.5/4344/

William

Another article on Krasovsky's murder:

Alexander Krasovsky

MOSCOW (AP) - Alexander Krasovsky, a prominent Russian aerospace engineer, died Saturday of a heart attack after burglars locked him up in his bathroom and stole his Soviet-era medals. He was 82.

Krasovsky, a member of the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences, had worked at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy since 1954 and won numerous state decorations for his research in automatic control systems for the aerospace sector.

Krasovsky received one of the highest Soviet-era medals, the Hero of Socialist Labor, and several other awards for his work, which aided the development of Soviet air defense weapons and cruise missiles, the daily Izvestia reported.

Russian media said Krasovsky was the latest veteran to fall victim to burglars searching for Soviet-era medals for sale on the black market. The Hero of Socialist Labor medal fetches up to $1,000, Izvestia reported.

The link: http://legacy.com/LegacySubPage1.asp?Pag...ry&Id=5652

[HuliganRS]

Some things never change in Russia...

I read another article where this gentelmen was 75 and had a HSU not HSL...
...and he slipped in the bathroom while trying to free himself and that's how he died from a head wound...

Rusty.

Here's the link to the article from Komsomol Truth
http://www.kp.ru/daily/23050.5/4344/

You know you can trust a publication that recieved:

[Chuck In Oregon]

Not everything that disappeared from a Soviet museum was stolen. At least, not in the way you would normally think of that term.

When the USSR collapsed, the state museum in Tbilisi was closed. actually abandoned. Some of the best stuff was, indeed, stolen then. But the majority of the displays were just thrown away. Some people, including some former museum employees, picked items up out of the trash. Sometimes oddball things still turn up. I bought a WW II postal stationery display and a couple of "Comrade Stalin thanks you" cards (Sevastopol and one other) for next to nothing just because they interested me. I don't think anyone ever envisioned a market for such things. I imagine that such oddities will keep turning up for years.

[otlichnik]

Another way that stuff came out of museums is through museum closures.

As anyone who visited the USSR knew there were small museums everywhere - every small town and large factory had one. Many were "owned" by party organizations or town soviets. Some had surprisingly good stuff in them - victory parade uniforms of general born in that town, etc. As the nasty nineties rolled on many of these museums were closed and their stock was sold off. This was done by the museum directors or their bosses in the local party or soviet organization and hence was legal.

However, whether any of the proceeds of these sales ever made it to the party or soviet coffers is another question.

Shawn

[DougD]

I don't think the Rusdsians are/ were as paranoid about cloth as they are about medals. Not to say they want the nicer stuff leaving, they are just not as aware to look for it.

The best story I had about this was with a nice M1945 VP Generals tunic for a major general of naval construction. Needless to to say its a rare uniform worth a few thousand $ over here. It was in a small museum in the Leningrad area. I imagine the genral worked in the shipyards of Leningrad. Anyway, one of our "guys" went to the museum , saw it, and offered to buy it from the older man who ran the museum. The man politly said no. My friend went back; the guy still said no. Then my guy found out that the guys son was getting married, went back to the museum with $$$ in hand and said to the guy"don't you want to get your son something nice for his wedding?" That made the guy break and he sold the uniform. His holding out did let him get about double what he normally would have gotten.

SC is right about the smaller museums. I was in the Prokorovka Museum back in 1998. It looked like 10 people visited it per year and yet inside it had 4 different VP generals uniforms. Museums like this provide us cloth collectors / dealers with 80% of our good stuff.

DD

[Tal Inbar]

"Museums like this provide us cloth collectors / dealers with 80% of our good stuff. "

What about the MORAL Point of view? This is like robbing the state's history!

But I geuss it got more care at private collection, but still - I have a little :confused: feelings.

Tal