Any ideas?

[TakeshiKovacs]

Anyone have any clue what this is? Been looking everywhere and can't find anything. Perhaps I'm not looking in the right places?

[CtahhR]

It looks to be a fire-fighters' graduation Badge. Can't pin down "PPD" exactly.
Most likely dates from the late 1940's and Moscow made.

[desantnik]

I believe the badge to be of more recent provenance...

[CtahhR]

This example is of course a fake - the lack of wear on the reverse and general "whitewash" patina are a dead giveaway.

Soviet Graduation Badges were reinstituted (after being halted after the Revolution) in 1946 so even if original it's no "war time" piece.

[TakeshiKovacs]

Found it! The PPD comment got me thinking...SOVIET RUSSIAN ORDER MEDAL BADGE PPD, RARE (07/02/2011)

back looks fake on this one, but the rest seems legit. Thats assuming the one in the link is legit. I honestly dont have a clue.

Of course thats apparently through ebay, so who knows how accurate that is. argh..

[CtahhR]

I'd also say the one shown there is also fake. The "similar items" which look to be from the same seller (by the background) are also fakes.

[TakeshiKovacs]

Any help you can give in directing me towards good dealers would be SO helpful. Honestly I'm looking at more common, easy to find pieces to start because i'm not exactly rich. But you're right, theres junk everywhere. It's already driving me crazy.

At the moment there are some things I don't mind being "authentic" or not. But if I can get he real thing, seems silly not to.

Alot of the old pins seem to be reproductions but there also seem to be thousands of different ones with different variations. Has anyone ever comiled a database of those? I see alot of military award databases but nothing on the plain old propaganda.

Ok I'll stop now. =)

[CtahhR]

I'd advise giving Desantnik a message. You can trust him 1000% and I'm sure he'll be able to help you in some way.

On the subject of Badges there are vast resources. There are so many Badges out there from national awards, ministerial awards, veteran and other organisations, separate SSRs and ASSRs without mentioning more local regional bits and of course those priced bits made to "collect" which were never awarded to anyone.

Have a look through the Badge section of the forum and you'll find a vast array of real Soviet awards. For more localised SSR awards look in the "Republics Of The Soviet Union" section. There are thousands of them. I'll post some more "later".

[Dat Nguyen]

Rats ...

Let me throw in some photos of the one in my care ... If these are fakes, then we are in trouble. Got this one about 20 years ago.

Pardon the photo quality. Serial # 41417 very similar screw plate but this one has a silver wash plating on it.

I can see a few differences between these two badges … The bottom part of the helmet on mine ends at the horizontal line. The other one ends below that line. Minor differences on the riffle (?) that points to the upper right; the bands.

[TakeshiKovacs]

Due to the bidding skyrocketing to almost 100 bucks, im going to assume that it's not a fake, or someone got paid lol