Soviet Academy Graduation Badges

[otlichnik]

Ibaya,

Kudos for posting such a fabulous study in photos. This is an excellent future reference.

So, what now?

In my mind there are two possibilities.

1) The high quality mint mark ones are the only genuine ones and were used till the end of the USSR. The other are (likely post-Soviet) fakes.

2) This is a case of declining quality. At some point the badge manufacture moved from MMD to another facility and quality went down. All badges are genuine but early vs. late. The late types have also continued to be manufactured post-USSR for sale to the public.

I have no clue of the true story. Either way the MMD ones should be much more desirable!!

I wonder if there is a way to find out if any of these non-MMD were really issued?? The details are so subtle that I doubt examining and Soviet-era photos would help....

Shawn

Just a short postscript I may have mentioned before on another thread.

I personally bought a Russian Suvorov school badge at the supply store in the St. Petersburg Suvorov school in 1999 - so it was 100% official.

The quality was very poor!