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A Reissue Silver Star and Purple Heart Group with Unusual Features


Dave
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I'm admittedly a bit of a nerd when it comes to post-WW2 engraving on medals, and when reissue groups come up, I like to see how they conform to what I know...or in this case...do not conform.

 

This is a nice group of what appears to be a Silver Star and Purple Heart awarded to the "most decorated soldier in the 45th Division" (not sure where that title came from!) The group is being sold by his niece who, from my correspondence with her, does not appear to be a collector or know a huge amount about militaria, aside from the research she's done to sell this group. The group has the "classic" late 80s, early 90s, reissue engraving on the Purple Heart. I've yet to see this engraving on any awarded Purple Hearts, just reissue ones. Thus, along with the plastic-sleeved CIB and ruptured duck, makes me think this group was probably reissued about that (80s or 90s).

The unusual aspects of this group that I'd like to point out to us all for our general education are these:

 

1. While the Purple Heart has the standard engraving on it, the Silver Star has a much smaller font. It makes sense that it's smaller, given the space to engrave on the back of the Silver Star, but it's not a font that I'm used to seeing (in fact, I can't remember seeing another like this).

 

2. Both medals appear to be WW2 production, with slot brooches. In 1986, HLI remanufactured a bunch of WW2 awards so they could be reissued. With those, and with what I've normally seen as reissue awards through the 1980s, they have always come in the grey faux leatherette Arrow cases. These are (obviously) in WW2 period cases. With that piece of foam in with the Purple Heart, I'm making the assumption that these might have been the product of an earlier remanufacturing, perhaps? I've seen the grey cases awarded even for late Vietnam casualties, so the fact that these black ones were sent to a family in the 80s make this quite unusual.

 

In line with above, I've actually seen the 1980s and 90s reissue Purple Hearts in the black wartime cases before - a couple have been posted up in the facebook forums in the last year. My assumption was that the medal was simply swapped into a WW2 case in order to make it more appealing to a collector ("Oh look, a named medal! It HAS to be from WW2!") and thus the fact that the more-recently-engraved medal was married to the older case was simply someone trying to be deceptive. In this case (pardon the pun) it appears that reissue awards DID come in wartime cases. Interesting...

 

Anyway, I found this quite interesting and wanted to share it with everyone to improve our general knowledge of reissue awards.

 

Here's a link to the auction if anyone's interested (no, I don't know the seller and I believe the group to be overpriced, but whatever...) https://www.ebay.com/itm/WWII-Silver-Star-Purple-Heart-Rifle-Pin-Eagle-Pin-Original-Newspaper-Clips-/302961370561

 

Dave

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi Dave. Here is a 2016 Silver Star Medal and Purple Heart the US Army issued to me for my grandfather's World War I service. Any comments?

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Thanks for posting those! That kind of font and those newly-manufactured medals are exactly what I'd expect to see for a pair reissued in 2016. Thank you for sharing them!

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Hi Dave again...I forgot to show the boxes. The one on left had the Silver Star Medal and the right had the Purple Heart. Note: Both cases have a notch on the bottom planet area to accommodate a Purple Heart easier.post-159314-0-97637400-1544379025_thumb.jpg Also different manufacturers and different versions of United States Of America. A whole new topic here. Any more comments?

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The Silver Star was a first time award. When the US Army was going thru his record for the Silver Star Medal they reissued his Purple Heart along with his WWI Victory Medal with 6 clasps which included France. I had posted the WWIVM earlier in post NEW ISSUE PAY ATTENTION WWI Victory Medal. WWI Silver Lapel and 3 more new awards I never knew he earned.

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Thanks again for showing pics of the cases. This was why I brought attention to the first group. Your group is exactly what I'd expect to see as a re-issue set of awards. Engraving, boxes, etc. In contrast (and why I posted it) the first group consists of WW2 vintage awards, in WW2 vintage boxes, with unusual engraving - all three things different than the "normal" re-issue groups that are seen out there.

 

Thank you for adding your grandfather's group to the thread - it's a great contrast to what I was pointing out in the first post. :)

 

Dave

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  • 1 month later...

A few more modern engraved Purple Hearts and others recently popped up on eBay...I'll add them here to this thread for reference!

 

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From the above, I will go out on a limb and say that someone put Burdick's medals in old boxes, hoping they could pass them off to an unsuspecting collector as WW2-vintage awards.

 

The ones to Yakus seem original, and it's really nice to see ones with Arial font with dated documents...in this case, 1986.

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  • 4 months later...

Bringing this thread back up. Here's another reissue group that popped up on eBay from 1986. Interesting to note that the Purple Heart is a WW2 vintage one!

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So one thing we've learned so far is that the medium sized san serif engraving dates from the 1980s. In all these cases, the mid 1980s.

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