Last fall, a woman that I have known as a neighbour for many, many years asked me if I wanted to buy 'an old German medal'. She told me she wanted to sell it for $3,500 (but her son told her it was worth a lot more). She showed it to me and left it with me for a week. I talked to several collectors I know and they all told me they didn't have enough expertise to authenticate it. I tried looking it up in Forman's Guide and an older copy of "The Iron Cross". I couldn't find detailed enough photos, so I looked in many places on the internet.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find enough detailed photos anywhere I looked. I even checked through current and past threads on this forum. I posted a thread on here (although I couldn't post scans), and a couple of guys who responded to my thread advised that it couldn't be real. The one thing that everyone seemed to be the most uncomfortable with was the fact that the ribbon had a mini RK ribbon sewn on the ends as the tie-string. One of the guys also said that I should look for a 'glob of material' between the 1 and the 8 on the reverse. I could barely see a tiny blob with my 10x loupe, so that seemed to cinch it for me.
So, not wanting to spend $3,500 of my hard-earned cash on something that didn't seem to pass the sniff test, I gave it back to my neighbour and told her I couldn't afford it.
Yesterday, I talked to her again and asked her what happened to the 'old German medal'. She told me that her son Wolfgang found a buyer in Europe for it and they sold the medals and their boxes for $8,000 (She was thrilled with the price it brought).
I told her that some of the people I talked to about it were skeptical that it was real. I asked her how she knew it was real. She said, "My older brother won it in WW2. Later he won a leaf shaped thing that came with the medal."
So I told her that some of the people I had talked to suggested that the ribbon didn't sound right. She told me she had sewn the ribbon herself when she was 7 years old, for her brother ... Hubert Pularski ...
I did a little research on Hubert Pularski, and he was an Oberfeldwebel in Grenadier Regiment 948 who won the RK, then the Oakleaves in 1944.
Some lucky person in Europe got an authentic RK w/ oakleaves for $8,000 last fall. Although I didn't see the oakleaves, I could have had the set for $3,500.
Alas, the one that got away ...
Unfortunately, I couldn't find enough detailed photos anywhere I looked. I even checked through current and past threads on this forum. I posted a thread on here (although I couldn't post scans), and a couple of guys who responded to my thread advised that it couldn't be real. The one thing that everyone seemed to be the most uncomfortable with was the fact that the ribbon had a mini RK ribbon sewn on the ends as the tie-string. One of the guys also said that I should look for a 'glob of material' between the 1 and the 8 on the reverse. I could barely see a tiny blob with my 10x loupe, so that seemed to cinch it for me.
So, not wanting to spend $3,500 of my hard-earned cash on something that didn't seem to pass the sniff test, I gave it back to my neighbour and told her I couldn't afford it.
Yesterday, I talked to her again and asked her what happened to the 'old German medal'. She told me that her son Wolfgang found a buyer in Europe for it and they sold the medals and their boxes for $8,000 (She was thrilled with the price it brought).
I told her that some of the people I talked to about it were skeptical that it was real. I asked her how she knew it was real. She said, "My older brother won it in WW2. Later he won a leaf shaped thing that came with the medal."
So I told her that some of the people I had talked to suggested that the ribbon didn't sound right. She told me she had sewn the ribbon herself when she was 7 years old, for her brother ... Hubert Pularski ...
I did a little research on Hubert Pularski, and he was an Oberfeldwebel in Grenadier Regiment 948 who won the RK, then the Oakleaves in 1944.
Some lucky person in Europe got an authentic RK w/ oakleaves for $8,000 last fall. Although I didn't see the oakleaves, I could have had the set for $3,500.
Alas, the one that got away ...
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