04-20-2008, 02:46 AM
I'm guessing you guys are right about this being tinkered with. Still, if the set was mine, I would eventually research just one of the awards just prove for a fact the tinkering before splitting it all up, and at least net a single researched award to boot. I've actually got a smaller group that I strongly suspect of the same problem right now: I have an award booklet and the final medal listed, but I think the ink is bad and that someone tacked it on. I think the doc has been tampered with, but I want to get an AC before I write off the booklet I have. I've got the money to do the research, so I figured "what the hell, why not."
I guess I now have this sense that there are so many variations in the ways things were done that we just never know for a genuine fact until docs are in hand. Maybe after breaking it up, someone will find that these stamps came out in different variations or there was some wierd circumstance that no one expected or that the holder (for some reason we just don't know) had two BM's added by another unit after the first entries in '46 (maybe he lost his paperwork?). I think it also helps to train all us newbies when we match professional observations with documentation. It definitively teaches us what to look for (stuff the old hands don't miss as easily) by showing how a fake is caught by intuitive observation and proven with factual documents.
The difference in the capital "O" on the last two stamps sure calls it all heavily into question: like someone came around long after the fact and added two orphans to make a big and sexy group. Still, there's nothing like an award card to give a dude a reason to finalize the divorce when someone splits this "faked" group up. It's like personally actually catching her in bed with another man instead of just being told about it by a friend... ;)
Of course, that "proof" will cost $55 to $65... :)
I guess I now have this sense that there are so many variations in the ways things were done that we just never know for a genuine fact until docs are in hand. Maybe after breaking it up, someone will find that these stamps came out in different variations or there was some wierd circumstance that no one expected or that the holder (for some reason we just don't know) had two BM's added by another unit after the first entries in '46 (maybe he lost his paperwork?). I think it also helps to train all us newbies when we match professional observations with documentation. It definitively teaches us what to look for (stuff the old hands don't miss as easily) by showing how a fake is caught by intuitive observation and proven with factual documents.
The difference in the capital "O" on the last two stamps sure calls it all heavily into question: like someone came around long after the fact and added two orphans to make a big and sexy group. Still, there's nothing like an award card to give a dude a reason to finalize the divorce when someone splits this "faked" group up. It's like personally actually catching her in bed with another man instead of just being told about it by a friend... ;)
Of course, that "proof" will cost $55 to $65... :)
