Anyone familiar with this thread?

**3aStalina** · 10-27-2014, 01:21 AM

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saw this while digging around the net trying to confirm authenticity of some of my rare Soviet medals (Odessa/Sevastopol/Belgrade/Partisan) and was astonished to read this post by one expert on that forum showing some very good fakes out there that i would never suspect; not all of the ones he posted, but a few. now i'm doubting some of my rarest medals... opinions, we all have them, but this expert is highly regarded on that forum. what are your thoughts on this piece of information?

**Espenlaub Militaria** · 10-27-2014 01:21 AM

We also buy and trade your items and full collections!

**Auke** · 10-27-2014, 02:10 AM

It's very dispiriting, but some medals are faked almost to perfection nowadays (above all the Odessa and Partisan medals), to the point that it has become practically impossible to tell if a medal is original based on digital images. A friend of mine in Russia tells me that Odessa fakes have gotten so good, than nowadays only very experienced authenticators can tell if a certain medal is real or not (and only by handling the medal in person). However, some (if not most) of the medals posted in that topic can be easily discerned as being fake and are not nearly the best fakes out there. It's very disheartening, but that's how it is these days.

**3aStalina** · 10-28-2014, 05:01 AM

the thread i mentioned has validity in comparison to original examples on MonDvor's site. on MonDvor, take a look at reverses of Caucasus, Stalingrad, Leningrad and Odessa type 1. they are the same. take a closer look at the K, the U and the YU in SovetsKUYU, you'll see what i mean. now take a look at same type reverse of Sevastopol and Moscow, you see a subtle difference in the K U YU... there are other examples of inconsistency in their examples of originals.

i don't have any reason to doubt the authenticity of MonDvor examples, but am now lead to believe that there had to have been multiple dies for reverses of these medals, and even perhaps obverses as well, with very subtle differences in font designs. what do you think?

**Auke** · 10-28-2014, 12:17 PM

Mondvor doesn't go into the smallest details - the Red Star, OPW2 and campaign medal pages in particular do not cover all minor variations. The Mondvor website (which hasn't seen any major updates in the last 8 years, by the way) is a great tool for beginning and intermediate collectors, but for more exhaustive overviews one should study the Faleristika and Sammler forums.