KAISER WILHELM I CENTENNIAL MEDAL - silver?

[mietek]

Hello.

I have a question. Today I got Imperial KAISER WILHELM I CENTENNIAL MEDAL. My it's a battlefield relic, and looks bit different than for example:
http://www.derrittmeister.com/051037.htm . I'm not 100% sure, but it looks as medal was covered by silver. Is it possible? Were also silver one?

mietek

[Fred Borgmann]

Hello.

I have a question. Today I got Imperial KAISER WILHELM I CENTENNIAL MEDAL. My it's a battlefield relic, and looks bit different than for example:
http://www.derrittmeister.com/051037.htm . I'm not 100% sure, but it looks as medal was covered by silver. Is it possible? Were also silver one?

mietek

I have never heard of a silver version of this common medal. Judging from how your picture looks this medal may have been lightly silver plated and this would have been done privately. Fred

[Christian L]

do you have a scanner or photo to get a digital pic?

have never seen such a thing, too!

christian

[Bobby lee]

Could it be the residue from a cleaner? I've seen this when medals were cleaned and the cloth couldn't get into the nooks and crannies. There is no Earthly reason IMO, to silver plate this medal, it would not have been authorized for wear nor enhance its value.

[Daniel Krause]

A silver Centenary medal?
Makes no sense. Privately gilt o.k. but silvered????

Also from heavy polishing You cannot get a silver touch on it. This medals were made of bronce.
BUT there is a rare zink variant around, made as replacement medals in WW1. This zink option is the only I can imagine to look like a silver Centenary.

From the pic we have here a normal bronce one which was privately gilded and laaater heavily polished that the gilding nearly disappeared.

Best regards

Daniel

[mietek]

Thank you so much for your help!!!!

As I wrote, medal it was battlefield founding, coverred by some corrosion, it looked like old silver. Now medal is after cleaning (Before I was worried to clean it, I didn't want to remove silver) and of course you were right.
It's standard bronze one. However for me it always will be question, why that 19-century medal was in ww2 German trench?

thanks a lot.

mietek