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 Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Casino tokens and high silver prices
Posted by Fred
This blog entry while not military in subject may be of value to many readers. Since you are all collectors of varying degree, many of you may have visited casinos and brought home some ten dollar silver center tokens as souvenirs or may even have a small collection of them. Over the last few years changes have occurred that you should be aware of. Casinos have ceased issuing and redeeming the silver center ten dollar tokens (and most other tokens too). That means that the tokens are now a finite item which should make them more collectible in the future and hopefully a good investment. Many of you can not or do not want to wait that long and may even be thinking of selling the tokens for their ever increasing silver value. Most coin dealers will only buy them as silver and will usually under estimate the actual silver content due to lack of knowledge. On ebay these tokens rarely bring bids equal to their silver or face value because the bidders will not pay more than that amount for the token including the postage that they know they will have to pay. Then the seller also has to pay the ebay and paypal fees so as a seller you will usually only get little more than half the silver value of tokens sold that way. Keeping all this in mind recently I saw some of the outer rings of the silver center tokens in a dealer’s junk box for a quarter each. Best quarter I ever spent. Now I can weigh just the outer ring without having to damage one of my tokens. The ring weighs 19.2 grams. The complete token, ring and the .999 silver center weighs 37.34 grams. Therefore the silver center weighs 18.14 grams of pure silver or .5832 oz actual silver weight. Multiply the current silver price by .5832 and you will have the actual melt value. The melt value of the gold plated bronze ring is any one’s guess. When you find a good silver buyer, if that is the route you decide to take, you could throw in the rings for free.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 6:45:51 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00) 
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Friday, December 11, 2009
“It’s Cast”
Posted by Fred
Finally we are up and running again. It even took three tries for my password to work. Oh well better late than never.
“It’s Cast” are words that a collector rarely wants to hear. There are times how ever, when those words are not the kiss of death. The coins issued in Mexican state of Sinaloa during the Mexican Revolution for example, are some of the worst looking sand castings that I have ever seen. When it comes to high relief medals and badges casting can also be a genuine means of production. A large government mint can strike high relief medals and badges from dies often having to strike the medals four or more times from the same die which is a costly operation to say the least. Some badges are so difficult that they must be struck in several pieces to be assembled later. For smaller private manufacturers with small production runs casting is a much more economical option. Lost Wax casting if done with expertise and the proper equipment can produce fantastic results that many collectors would not recognize as being cast without the use of a magnifying glass. Illustrated here is a two piece rubber mold, from the estate of an old time Milwaukee jeweler, that was used to make presentation copies of the Milwaukee Police Department Detective’s badge. At the risk of over simplification I will briefly describe the process. The mold is filled with a wax that hardens hard enough so that the rubber mold can be removed without causing any distortion. The hardened wax badge copy is then encased in a very fine clay which in turn hardens into a perfect mold of the badge. When the clay is hard enough molten metal is injected into the mold causing the wax to vaporize as the molten metal replaces it. After the metal has cooled the clay mold is removed and the new badge is ready to be engraved and have a pin and catch attached.
So how does one determine if a cast badge is genuine? First try to know the correct characteristics for the item and the time period of manufacture. For example the Milwaukee detective badge has been in use for about 100 years so expect several maker variations. Some Imperial era German aviation badges were made over 30 or more years by many makers using both cast and die struck methods. Some are government issues and others private replacement pieces. Generally the higher the quality the better the chances are that the item is good. A makers name or mark also helps but remember that some good items do not carry a makers mark and some fakes do.
Friday, December 11, 2009 4:04:03 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Austro-German Medal Group
Posted by Fred
This is an unusual grouping of two military service crosses. The first one on the left is the Austrian Balkan War Mobilization Cross with the dates 1912 - 1913. The second is the War Honor Cross for German combatants of the First World War which was first instituted in 1934. Since the original owner was Austrian he would not have been able to apply for the German cross until 1938 after Germany annexed Austria. What is really interesting about this group is lack of other medals. How did this man serve in two wars and not earn any other medals? Maybe he was an Austrian desk jockey who never saw combat, was never wounded and got out of the service without earning any long service awards. Since Austria was no longer an independent country he may have discarded his Austrian WWI service medal and replaced it with the German cross. He might not have liked the Nazis that took over his old country so if he did get any civilian long service medals with the swastika he may have refused to add them to his group or he may have died before he had to make that decision. What ever the reason this is a very unusual and rarely encountered medal combination grouping.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009 6:27:04 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 Wednesday, November 18, 2009 Thursday, November 12, 2009
Cross Over Collectibles
Posted by Fred
Most of us who collect things usually collect items that appeal only to collectors who specialize in the same collecting field like coins, stamps, militaria or a multitude of others. Once in awhile however we get lucky and find an item that is sought after by collectors from different fields which are totally unrelated to each other. The example illustrated below is a book published in 1943 by Walter Butler Shipbuilders, Inc. of Superior, Wisconsin. The award decoration illustrated on the front cover instantly caught my eye and being a WWII Wisconsin item was an added bonus. The fact that the company also had a strong Canadian connection was a plus since the Canadians are strong collectors of their own military items. Best of all is that the involvement of the Dionne Quintuplets in the war effort is a major portion of this book. Collecting Dionne Quint’s items is a serious collecting specialty but not one that I ever expected would end up in my collection.
Thursday, November 12, 2009 6:07:56 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Crossed Oars
Posted by Fred
Back in the early 1970’s when I was living in Central Illinois there were gun shows almost every weekend. It was a great time for prowling and collecting. At one of these shows my heart skipped a beat when I first laid eyes on the piece shown below and wishfully concluded that this could be an Imperial German Marines item. They did have similar looking insignia but the “EMS” on the eagle’s shield was a mystery. The style of German eagle would date this piece at 1888 or earlier. The oars should have been a major clue but one only sees what they want to see. Eventually while going through a German coin auction catalog I saw some German rowing club medals and all had crossed oars. So this had to be a club badge too and that made it easy to see that the mysterious “EMS” on the shield was the name of a river. This is a badge of the Ems Rowing Club which was most likely based in the resort city of Bad Ems of Franco-Prussian War fame. By the way, the ribbon does not belong with this medal, I put it there to keep the loop from damaging the badge. Even though it is not military it is a spectacular looking medal and a reminder to avoid premature conclusions.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009 5:56:00 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Propaganda
Posted by Fred
Ever have one of those days when absolutely nothing goes right? When the whole world seems to be conspiring against you and everything you have been working for has been destroyed in the blink of an eye? Well then you can sympathize with the poor sailor below who has nothing left but his fighting spirit and enough energy to flip off his foes one last time. The post card illustrated below is what I call positive propaganda. I define positive propaganda as propaganda that is boosting your side by highlighting your virtues. In this case the German Fighting Spirit. Other positive German propaganda cards show battles being won, happy troops in the field and at home, royalty doing their duty to support the war effort etc. etc. Negative propaganda on the other hand usually depicts the enemy as inhumane or sub-human and is more often than not based on lies. So in collecting as in life think positive and laugh at the negative.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 6:06:43 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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Tuesday, October 20, 2009 Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Mortar Thoughts
Posted by Fred
Many years ago one of the fellows I worked with was a retired air force veteran who spent some time in Vietnam. He knew that I collected military medals and gave me a mortar round which was made in 1943. He said WWII items like this were still being used in Vietnam! Think of that for a moment, if WWII munitions were still being used 25 years later after all the fighting during the last two years of WWII, the Korean war and in Vietnam until then, the American production capacity must have been huge and the quality must have been exceptionally high! It makes me wonder what the cost of production for one of these might have been. Even though this round is totally empty without any explosives remaining it could still be dangerous if it falls off a shelf and on one's head or foot. My only remaining question is how does something like this get out into the civilian world legally? Was it declared surplus due to age or did it just stray?
Wednesday, October 14, 2009 5:07:14 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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