below the counter or above board

[rapidh32]

I was at the militaria and medal fair at Stratford liesure centre today attempting to locate a Victory medal and War medal and after a fruitless search was offered unamed original medals that were apparantley issued either to Indian or South African servicemen

.These were claimed to be genuine unskimmed issues ,is this possible or were they copies

[welshdoc]

if they were erased you should see the "thiness" of the rim of the BMW in particular. The jury is out as to the veracity of the so called Indian "original" medals.

[bushfighter]

Mant

Let me quote a paragraph from an article placed in the December 2004 journal of the Orders and Medals Research Society and written by Pierce Noonan of Dix Noonan Webb, Auctioneers and Valuers:

We then learned that for some time now the South African medal office has been issuing, for a charge, unnamed 1914-15 Stars, British War Medals and bilingual Victory Medals to the next of kin of those families who can prove entitlement. The reason for the issuing of blank medals, it would seem, is that the South African authorities no longer possess a machine capable of impressing the naming on medals, the original equipment having been scrapped by the South African Mint many years ago."

Thus the South African medals you saw could well have been genuine but you are unlikely to know who was entitled to the medals.

This state of affairs has led to fraudulent namings now appearing on some of these medals put up for sale.

Harry

[per ardua per mare per terram]

Original medals were all issued named.