Marine Close combat Clasp- Citation

[Andrew]

Hi,

Recently I saw a couple of award documents/citations to a guy in the Kriegsmarine. Ist one was the relatively ordinary- Mine destruction war badge issued 43, BUT the second was an award document in ordinary type written style for the Marine Combat Clasp. It looked pretty genuine issued "am bord" but according to the explanation I got from the guy selling it, it was issued at Copenhagen. date is 1st may. I havent bought it as it is quite expensive! price was close on £400 GBP for both documents

Question is - were these awards and citations ever given out and were there any produced and issued?


Thanks in advance to anybody who replies.

best regards.

Andrew

[Gordon Williamson]

Andrew,

The award document for the Marine Frontspange was indeed given out, but never in any official pre-printed format, just typewritten pieces of paper as you describe. Partly because of the ease with which such things can be forged (anyone with an old typewriter and paper can put one together in five minutes) they have never reached any great value. I would never trust one unless it came as part of a grouping of documents.

The value of a Minesweeper Award Doc is somewhere around £60 for a nice one, so the Marine Frontspange one you have seen is effectively being vaued at £340. Formans guide gives a value of around £170 (admittedly not a particularly reliable guide). The last one I had was in a large set of docs around 30 in all, to the same officer including his soldbuch with corresponding entry. Sharing the price of the set equitably around the various docs in the set in line with scarcity of each, I reckoned the Marine Frontspange doc "share" was around £150. This was about a year ago.

Gordon

[Andrew]

citation

Many thanks, Gordon for your reply and information. I'm glad I didn't buy the documents as there are a bit too expensive.

thanks again,

Andrew