Collecting Medals 101

Medal collectors tend to be a slightly different breed than generic militaria collectors. Don't ask me why, but perhaps it has to do with there being only a small step from the established coin collecting hobby to medals and decorations.

In any case, instead of reinvent the wheel I suggest you check out the medal collecting society's guide to medal collecting at http://www.omsa.org/forums/collecting101.php

I actually kind of envy people like this, that have such a narrowly defined area of collecting.

And again, here is a good lesson. When I started collecting militaria I 'could' have picked up a few decent, identified wartime medals. But no, I went for some generic un-identified ones. Even just some modern ones as examples. They are now worth what I paid for them (or less). Had I spent a but more and gotten decent good quality ones, they would be worth far More- and thus are now a lot harder to get (and you have to deal with many more fakes).