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

[UQWozza]

Nicely attached pin & clasp - I guess the local jeweller had a go at this one.

Simon

[Nota Bene]

Nicely attached pin & clasp - I guess the local jeweller had a go at this one.

Simon

Yes, but I don't think it was done by a Russian jeweller - he would not have covered the number, and this type of clasp is not used in Russia.

Here's an interesting conversion.

Alexei

[Lapa]

Guys,

I seem to remember that piece, and I believe that at the time it was mentioned that it had been awarded to a Romanian (general?).

Marc

[Kirchgoens]

These two good wartime BM's were bought from the same guy two weeks apart. What struck me on these was that both had been repaired in exactly the same way (and this guy doesn't do repairs as far as I know). Both had the "ears" of later medals literally glued on them. Those ears had even been slightly rounded so they fit more snugly. You can see a bit of the brass under the plating of one of the ears, and the LM mint mark on both of them. One of them had previously had a hole through it, but that was filled as part of the repair.

I wonder if one veteran owned them both, and did the same repair on both. It's not a normal repair (at least in my experience), so the coincidence of the same local bazaar dealer selling both tells me that they were either from the same man or from the same repair dude.

[Kirchgoens]

These two wartime BM's have had their ears replaced in crude but functional ways:

[Kirchgoens]

Here are two examples of serial number obliteration.

One is an OG3 in the 49,95x range. The correct number is somewhere between 50 and 50, and probably not 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, or 57, but I don't think you can say for sure. It looks like it might have been 50, 58, or 59.

The second image is of a BM which has been gouged with some tool multiple times, leaving only the vestige of the trail "9" and maybe a leading "7". The BM has also lost it's ear, and was punched through so it could be wired to its suspension (found with an aluminum VetLabor suspension).

[Kirchgoens]

Here's another whose OldVetDude owner ran out of his source of ribbon. I guess Ole Boy just cut a section of napkin or table cloth that had some distant resemblence to a Capture medal, and did a hand-made sewing job to put it all together. He actually threaded the connecting link into this one.

[desantnik]

Here's another whose OldVetDude owner ran out of his source of ribbon. I guess Ole Boy just cut a section of napkin or table cloth that had some distant resemblence to a Capture medal, and did a hand-made sewing job to put it all together. He actually threaded the connecting link into this one.

Now this one I like!

[EricFG]

More nice stuff Brian. :thumbsup

That first one - BM-2,540,118 - has what looks like a pin going through it near the top of the medal just off-set below the ring. What's up with that?

[Kirchgoens]

Before the "glue and swap" repair, it probably had a hole punched or drilled through it to hang it. See the other image I posted above (a BM with a VetLabor ribbon) to see what it probably looked like before someone filled the hole back in.