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

[Doug]

Often, we come across groups where there are orders that have had an old serial number removed and a new one added. Dealers and collectors often attribute these changes to official replacements for lost orders or reissues for pre 1943 awards. As we know, sometimes these are marked with a "D" but more often, they are not. Interestingly, some dealers even charge more for these official replacements.

I would be interested in knowing the group's opinion of these pieces. Myself, I tend to avoid them because while many are truely official replacements, it seems that it would be easy for the fakers to make the orders fit the groups this way. In any event, it seems that these are still altered pieces and therefore, shouldn't carry the same value as an original as issued group.