How to Start Collecting Army Medals, Badges and Awards

If you’ve read the posts on Identify Medals, there’s a good chance you fall in one of the two categories: 1)) you’re a collector, or) you’re looking to become one. If you’re the former the article below will give an outline of the best way to begin collecting army badges and medals, so you can make it an enjoyable and rewarding pastime!

1. Find Out How to Approach

The first step when it comes to beginning to collect medals is to determine the best method to take. Instead of splurging on medals, you’ll want to think about the kinds of medals you’d prefer to discover. It will allow you to to narrow your attention.

Coin World suggests that you could adopt one of four methods to collect medals:

Create an Set
Collect an Artist
The focus is on an individual subject
Profile and Event

I would suggest that, for medals from the military it is the most effective to follow one of the four approach for collecting medals.

To illustrate the first option one could create an assortment of medals from the specific country or war. If you’re looking to begin small, making an array of Civil War medals is a good place to start. If you can recall them from a previous article, it will only take 2 medals to create the complete set!

In contrast, you may prefer not to begin by making a collection of USSR or Third Reich medals because you’ll be able to accumulate! But if you’re looking for the collection to last as a life-long hobby, perhaps you’d like to begin with a bigger collection.

In the fourth option, you could concentrate on a particular battle in an war or area. For instance, you might wish to keep all the decorations and medals which were presented in the northern part of France throughout World War I.

This is probably not the best option for military awards, unless you enjoy the style of a particular artist, you might want to concentrate on collecting all medals awarded to a particular military hero , like Erwin Rommel, for example.

I believe that this is the most rewarding method to collect medals. If you pair campaign medals with individual awards it will put the individual story of a soldier’s tale, making it an historical collection of medals that every collector would want to own.

You could also think about joining the local museum, and put an exhibit of a brief description of the service member you served with and lending your medals to museums for a short period of time. This is a good option to uncover the meaning behind your collection. Personally, I’d love this idea since it is a tale and who doesn’t enjoy stories?

2. Learn about Your Individual/Event/War

Once you’ve figured out how you’re going to approach medal collecting, I’d encourage you to read up on your event/individual/war. This may be an interesting idea since it appears to have nothing to have anything to do with medals. However, by reading up and visiting museums that pertain to your event/individual/war, you’ll have a better idea of what medals to look for.

For instance I’m a major historian, with a particular passion for World War II, and If I ever do become interested in collecting medals (I am currently collecting one! ) I’d definitely keep track of the medals of World War II. However, there are a lot of that I’m always studying more.

As an example, I was at the Airborne Museum in Fayetteville, North Carolina recently and was informed of seven new medals I’d never heard of before. Becoming informed about the events, individual/wars will not only provide you with new ideas for medals you can discover but will also make the process less grueling in nature and much more pleasurable.

3. Utilize a variety of sources to find Medals

Thanks to the internet, there are numerous options available to you in order to find medals. You can purchase medals on the internet from auction houses like, eBay, or even hyperlinks on our site to Identify Medals.

Naturally, however it is crucial to ensure that you purchase from trustworthy dealers to avoid counterfeit medals. You can look through in the Medal News magazine as well as the annual Medal Yearbook to get an idea of the kinds of medals available, and at what cost you need to pay.

Dan Wade from JustCollecting, an online trading site, advises collectors of medals to inquire about the story behind the medal as well as the method by which the seller obtained their medal and to look for the item in person (if feasible! ).

If you’re willing an extra time looking for something, explore garage/yard sale, antique fairs auctions and thrift shops, and fairs for collectors of medals. If you attend any of them chances, it’s something than finding a diamond in the rough. And you might not get anything if you’re searching for a particular medal.

If you’re willing to a wide range of possibilities and don’t have a particular medal to think about such as antique flea markets and fairs can be excellent options since they’re likely to be considerably less expensive.

A side note Make sure you get the best price. Be aware of the factors that contribute to the differences in price for medals. The event during which the medal was awarded, the form of the medal quality of the medal and the quality of the medal can all influence the cost of a medal.

If a medal is excellent condition however the ribbon isn’t, you could obtain a new ribbon. However, you should keep the original ribbon in case you would ever decide to sell the medal or just for the sake of posterity.