opinions on medal bar

[brownshirts]

hi guys,
anyone got an opinion on this medal bar.?
ive a few personal points with it...ie;the kvk looks cheap and the SS long service award (SS marking look like they in wrong position)

anyway heres a few photos to pick some points from.

regards
matthew

[brownshirts]

i have no idea how to swap photo over so it will upload pics.
if anyone can PM me i will email them(maybe you have a better understanding)

thanks
matthew

[Scott C.]

Posting Matthew's photo of the front of the bar...

[Stu W]

First Impressions

Hello Matthew,

It's difficult to say without good close photos of both sides of each medal and bar but my first thoughts are that the KVK is OK, the SS medal is a fake and has been swapped out for a Heer LSM. The fact that the SS runes are off kilter is not an issue. They are that way on originals. To me it's more the lack of stippling and crosshatching as well as what appears to be deterioration of the rim at the 6 o'clock position that makes me think it's a repro. It's also not a combination that I would expect to see together. Hard to believe that he did time in the SS as well as Social Welfare and Luftschutz, at least in my mind, whereas I can see it more easily with a Heer 4 year LSM.

Having said that, detailed close photos may cause me to change my mind.

Are you aware that we have the man that wrote the book on medal bars (literally) here on WAF? Try bringing this to the attention of Tom Yanacek (tyanacek) and see what he has to say. If I'm wrong then we can both learn.

Kind regards,
Stu

[Nigel N]

from this photo all of the medals except the ss one look ok, are there any holes in the blue ribbon where the metal eagle for a wehrmacht l/s medal may have been? if not it could originally have had a faithful service cross, maybe someone put the ss medal on there to try and make it more desirable? -Nigel

[Stu W]

Faithful Service...

Hi Matthew,

Nigel may have it correct with his Faithful Service comment. I believe that a 4 year Heer LSM would have been mounted next to the KVK whereas the FS could be after that Social Welfare.

Are you able to give us a nice close photo of that SS medal?

Kind Regards,
Stu

[byterock]

Me thinks they are in the wrong order as well, Shouldn't the Volkspflege be on the other side of the Luftschutz

[Tom Yanacek]

Hi Guys,

In my opinion, this is a postwar put-together medal bar using a mixture of original and reproduction parts. This style of construction is quite typical of the flood of fake medal bars, assembled with a myriad of all-Third Reich Period awards and designed to awe the novice.

The SS 4-Year Long Service Medal does indeed look to be a fake. (Danger sign #1) I wouldn't try to justify the medal bar by saying that the fake SS Medal was switched out from either a Wehrmacht 4-Year Long Service Medal or a 25-Year Faithful Service Decoration. As someone already mentioned, there is no evidence of there ever having been a Wehrmacht eagle device on that ribbon. A 25-Year Faithful Service does not make sense here either. The guy would have had to be at least 43 years old to have this medal on his bar, yet there is no WWI service. (I guess the guy was just getting a lot of rest in his early years so that he could have the energy to do everything in WWII as a middle-ager.) (We could also try to justify the bar by saying it was originally a Police 8-Year Medal or RAD 4 or 12-Year Medal, but never mind that.)

A serious error in award placement is the Social Welfare Medal in the number two spot. The Social Welfare Medal should be mounted last on this bar. (Danger sign #2) 1942 regulations did allow for a special wartime award of the Social Welfare Medal to be worn immediately after the 1939 War Merit Cross, but since there is no crossed swords device on the ribbon of this Social Welfare Medal, it should not be placed second on the bar. And in about 33 years of collecting, I have never seen an original medal bar with a Social Welfare Medal in that position. Although errors in award placement were sometimes made on original medal bars, this particular error taken together with the fake SS Medal spells doom for this medal bar.

I would scrutinize everything on the medal bar. Try checking the ribbons and any other cloth materials with a blacklight to see if anything glows. Although it is not uncommon to find original medal bars in excellent condition, the ribbons on this bar strike me as too "new looking" with what looks like a deliberate light soiling with a bit of dirt. Check the other medals as well as the SS Medal. From just the single picture, I am not completely confident that all of the other medals on this bar are real. (I do see why Matthew has some concerns about even the War Merit Cross.) It would be interesting to see some more pictures of this medal bar, and especially, a picture of the reverse.

Best regards,
Tom

[Stu W]

Good Lesson.

Hi Tom,

Thanks for taking the time to explain the reasoning that lead to your opinion. I overlooked the minimum age 43 point completely. It's a great help to those of us learning about medal bars.

Regards,
Stu

[brownshirts]

hi guys,
more photos on the way,this was an ebay item,alarm bells always ring with large bars on ebay anyway!
i just thought it would make an interesting thread.
the info ive learnt from you guys on this thread is worth its weight in gold.

many thanks
matthew

[mrg]

Hi would not be one for me, my opinion would be put together bar, few red flags as already mentioned. All the best

[Scott C.]

Posting a couple of more photos of the bar for Matthew...

1.

[Scott C.]

2.

[Tom Yanacek]

Thanks for posting the additional pictures, Scott. There is no doubt in my mind now. This medal bar is a 100% bogus put-together. Look at the mounting style of this bar and remember it well. It is so typical of what many of the fake all-Third Reich bars will look like. One, well-respected dealer, actually had a few dozen of these put-together all-Third Reich bars mounted in this same exact manner. In fact, they were so much alike, it was obvious that they were all put together by the same individual.

Best regards,
Tom

[McCulloh]

Yup-made in Austria no less-probably @1-5 years ago. Huge piles of these bars litter Kellys' tables.

Danger sign #3: Luftschutz medal.

Very few collectors have actually studied the who, why and whens of Luftschutz awards. But, they are rarer and more unusual than most realize.
However, they are lots and lots of them left over from unawarded stocks.