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Most expensive silver purchase and why medal collectors don’t trust silver stackers...


Auricsstash

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Been meaning to put something up around this for a while so please bare with for the long post.

One of my other interests is British WW1 medals specifically to my little home town, on my local memorial there are 119 names of guys who were killed in WW1 for about 10 years I have been hunting these names pretty hard and managed to find medals to 5 of them and worked out who they all are bar 4 names these represent one of those 4 names. 

This pair is the most I have ever paid over spot for silver they were about £250 per Toz if my maths is correct. This guy won his M.M on the Somme and joined the tank corps where he served out the rest of the war. He is not listed on cwgc as a casualty so I could never find him, but he is on my memorial died 1920 of T.B and at the time it must have been felt locally to be war related hence his inclusion on my local memorial.

So why do medal collectors distrust silver stackers? back in the late 70s and early 80s very few people collected WW1 medals, pre internet days you had zero chance of knowing anything about the individual and as there was so much of it readily available it went in the melting pot when the prices spiked. So many of these awesome pieces of history are missing the silver medals or are gone entirely if these had hit the pot back in the day there would be nothing left of this lads ultimate sacrifice.

Sadly there are so many British War Medals out there without cool stories attached and you can get them at way less than spot price and if we do get a to the moon scenario we get the feeling that a huge amount of history will be once again lost in the melting pots.. 

 

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It's sad. You'd have to be quite ignorant to melt something like that.

Let's hope the internet can be useful and help locate some of these gems ?

Technically, alcohol is a solution..

'It [socialism] poses a growing threat, however unintentional, to the freedom of this country, for there is no freedom where the State totally controls the economy. Personal freedom and economic freedom are indivisible. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t lose one without losing the other.'

"There is no such thing as public money, there is only taxpayers' money"

Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live.

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How wonderful@Auricsstash that you have located and saved these medals from the melting pot.

The history and stories behind such medals should be preserved for all generations, to learn and appreciate how hard life was during WW1, the sacrifices made, the illnesses and death which resulted from it. Few realise that penicillin and subsequently antibiotics were not available until 1929 and onwards and many lost their lives at a result of contracting illness which today are treatable.

You may find the following links useful in your search.

https://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/ww1-records

https://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/medal-rolls

https://www.cwgc.org/find/find-war-dead

http://www.greatwar.co.uk/organizations/commonwealth-war-graves-commission.htm

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I checked all the local newspaper and found two articles on him the one with his picture announcing his M.M and this one below. I sporadically keep checking ancestry in the vain hope his service papers turns up as I would love to get him added as a causalty on cwgc, but need to prove he picked up T.B in the tank corps.

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Following a clear out of her mother's belongings, a lady in Belgium wrote to a local UK paper enclosing a photo and name of woman hoping to trace the family in the UK so she could return old photos, postcards and letters written to her mother in French. It was a long shot as she was sure the family would probably have moved away from the area as the photos were from long ago but she made the effort rather than binning the items.

Turns out someone saw the article and thought, oh my friend has a relative with that surname who used to live in the area years ago. The friend recognised the photo of her relative's relative and contacted her. In due course the photos, postcards and letters were sent over to England and were passed down to me!

So it may be a long shot, but I would suggest contacting your local newspaper and get the journalist interested enough to write a feature story on your 'lost' men'. You just never know.

You could also check out the mine explosion mentioned in the newspaper article. It might provide you with further information.

Would be interested to hear if anything turns up.

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That's awful I have a few partially erased medals myself and I cannot for the life of me fathom why someone could do that.. there are however some unnamed WW1 awards which are quite rare and command quite the premium If they are factory unimpressed..

 

 

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@Auricsstash I never really considered that people collected medals. Don’t really know why, I guess I was a little ignorant to the connection to why they were issued, but your post has really intrigued me into reading up, so thank you for that.

I hope you manage to source a few more as they don’t deserve to be lost.

Currently building my silver stack so looking for Kooks, Koalas, Eagles & Pandas

Outside of silver I also run a technology YouTube channel http://youtube.com/thenorthernblogger

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@creative Always nice to spur some interest there are some fabulous medals out there, depending where you are from either try local or if you have a City Pals battalion.. These are my main areas of interest..  one place to start is www.britishmedalforum.com great resource for all British awards.. If you need any help give me a shout..

Cheers

James

 

 

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19 hours ago, Auricsstash said:

That's awful I have a few partially erased medals myself and I cannot for the life of me fathom why someone could do that.. there are however some unnamed WW1 awards which are quite rare and command quite the premium If they are factory unimpressed..

 

 

Mostly done by sellers from what I have heard, embarrassment for selling them and don’t want their names known. 

Another interesting thing I like to pick up are WW related silver eg these Freemason “Jewels”. Fascinating the war and post war effort by masons, including building the Royal Freemason Hospital.

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I also have quite a few different types of medals, I use to have quite a few ww1 trios and pairs but sold most of them, it was good researching the individual and trying to find out his history, it’s a bit sad knowing that quite a lot of British war medals were melted down for their silver content splitting up their groups, I am still in search of my great great uncles trio and death penny and just hope one day I will find them, I also hope his BWM wasn’t melted down either

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40 minutes ago, Micky9776 said:

I also have quite a few different types of medals, I use to have quite a few ww1 trios and pairs but sold most of them, it was good researching the individual and trying to find out his history, it’s a bit sad knowing that quite a lot of British war medals were melted down for their silver content splitting up their groups, I am still in search of my great great uncles trio and death penny and just hope one day I will find them, I also hope his BWM wasn’t melted down either

Hi Micky if you are on the hunt for family medals check out britishmedal forum they have a family reunite section!!

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I have one of those Freemason medals too - Picked it up for spot. Knew nothing about it but couldn't pass it up. It feels nice in hand and a nice piece of history. Came with a blue & white ribbon too so been well loved.

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50 minutes ago, SilverS said:

I have one of those Freemason medals too - Picked it up for spot. Knew nothing about it but couldn't pass it up. It feels nice in hand and a nice piece of history. Came with a blue & white ribbon too so been well loved.

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Is yours hallmarked?  Ive seen identical ones, none of them are hallmarked, none of them say they’re silver and one specifically says it’s not silver.  Maybe there are two different versions?

*edit - I found there are 2 versions, a sterling silver and a base metal.

How much does yours weigh?

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I’ve just dug out my old collection and had a look through, its not a big collection anymore as I sold most of them, but I will keep these and sell them later on in life apart from the one to the left of the MBE as that one is mine, I will never part with it and will pass it on down the line

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Apologies when you said that was mine I thought you mean your award. It’s gotten so expensive I can no longer afford to collect Sheff pals items. I have a pretty good run on 1st morning Somme casualties but now I only collect items to guys form my hometown and finding them is pretty difficult.. That’s my fave 12th first morning casualty.

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