OPW II Hammer and Sickle question

[rt77]

Hi everyone,

I have a question about the hammer and sickle on the Order of the Patriotic War. On every example I have seen the hammer and sickle are made of gold but on this example it appears to be brass? Is this a replacement or a variation?

Many thanks for your help, David.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Yes, it should be Gold.

Sometimes these get robbed out and replaced.

Cheers, Ade.

[Egorka]

During the war time in the field conditions these hammer and sickle emblems were prone to damage and loss.
The replacements were often made out of steel hammer and sickle taken from red star cockade. These steel ones had practically identical size and shape. I think , this is the case here.
But Adrian is right, many OPW2 fell victim to greedy hands and got their gold parts stripped off.

[Marcel Banziger]

These can be found quite often with replaced hammer and sickle. As explained above, could be fallen into greedy hands but also these were often lost in the field and replaced with cockade hammer and sickle.

[Adrian Stevenson]

I have even heard that the gold got used to make gold tooth fillings!

[rt77]

Thank you for all the information! Very interesting :-)