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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Possibly the saddest thing I've seen whilst collecting medals


Geertsen

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Interesting that we seem no longer to have those 'All medals should be reunited back to the family' wallahs on the Forum these days.

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Hi Andy (stiletto _33853),

 

That's fascinating!...almost exactly a carbon copy of my initial post!

 

I suppose at least as Yellow mentioned silver objects get hoarded by bullion investors rather than melted down, there may be a hope that your grandfathers two missing medals may still be around.....somewhere!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I started collecting Memorial Plaques way back in the late 70's £2:50  - £3 each.  I would head to a dealers in Liverpool that had buckets of Victory Medals & Stars and a Shelf of plaques and would buy up to 20 plaques a time.  The BWMs were no where to be seen.  Sitting on my desk now is a Plaque, Star and BWM No victory Medal?  So if it Shows up 1800 Gnr John Walker Benson RFA for a re-unite.  

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Of course 6.5 million BWM were struck as opposed to 6.34 million Victory Medals.  So the existence of more solitaire BWM could relate to that?  However these statistics seem counter intuitive, after all you could qualify for the VM after Armistice (mine-clearance, Russia et cetera) but I believe the BWM qualification period concluded on 11 November?  If it wasn't so late and if I were at home, I could check my Dorling and find out if that is as I remember it!

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Wow horsey...it is late and I am tired! It's the other way round, BWM could be qualified for after 11 November...think logically man.  So the discrepancy is not counter intuitive, it is in fact absolutely consistent.  And possibly consistent with a larger number of solitaire BWM despite the lure of the bullion brokers??

 

now when I wake up in the morning, will this still make sense? Or will I need to rewrite everything? Beddddddd timeeeee!

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OK - sanity check concluded and so far this morning no Error 404!

 

what I wanted to convey last night was that there were 6.5m BWM minted and 6.34 VM.  The BWM could be won as a solo award, as the eligibility criteria were extended beyond 11/11/18.  So there were actually more BWM issued or claimed than VM.  It is not unreasonable therefore that there might be slightly more BWM solitaires in circulation now, despite the depredations of bulion markets.

 

Sometimes I really wonder why I bother going on the Internet at that time of night! Or indeed after dark!

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Looking at my collection, out of the split pairs and trios I have;

 

15 Stars, 4 of which are Mons stars.

8 bwm

3 trios missing the bwm

13 VM

1 trio missing the VM

 

I have one pair that I re-united, sold by two different sellers but in the same week on ebay.  They came from the same part of the country so perhaps they were picked up as singles at a boot sale or similar by the two sellers without them seeing the other medal?

 

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How about this then? Just seen a BWM advertised on our local E-bah-gum site, no details provided, except the price - TL 245, so about the GBP 60-63 mark (depending on when you check the very volatile markets!). It is described as "İNGİLTERE 1918 GÜMÜŞ MADALYA", and so "English silver medal, 1918", and has a rider that the owner has 15 for sale...!!!

 

Julian

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6 hours ago, trajan said:

How about this then? Just seen a BWM advertised on our local E-bah-gum site, no details provided, except the price - TL 245, so about the GBP 60-63 mark (depending on when you check the very volatile markets!). It is described as "İNGİLTERE 1918 GÜMÜŞ MADALYA", and so "English silver medal, 1918", and has a rider that the owner has 15 for sale...!!!

 

Julian

 

Difficult to determine the rights and wrongs of this to be honest. On the down side of course it means that any enterprising bloke/blokess can strip the British market and make a killing, thereby "depriving" British collectors and perhaps even forcing the prices up here. On the bright side, nobody will be melting them down at that kind of money, which of course means that these medals will be around for a good time to come and have a reasonably assured future.

 

The global nature of the collecting of British medals is nothing new, tens if not hundreds of thousands of items have been making their way across the Atlantic for decades now. Sometimes I even buy them back if the price is right, but that would be a lot easier if US postal rates were not so stupidly high.

 

I would be the first to admit that I have made this work for me in reverse, with many "foreign" medals in my collection coming my way at prices that are a fraction of what UK dealers would want for them.

 

On balance, its probably a good thing. It takes medals from local markets where they are not valued onto an international market where they are.

 

Warmest regards,

Mike

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