War medals, badges and regimental silver: why a medal group is not scrap

01

What you are holding: a group, its ribbons and a name

Medals found in a family drawer often come as more than one. The medals awarded to one person, worn together on a single bar or kept together in a box, are called a group. A group can be two medals or ten, and it may come with ribbons, clasps, a badge or two, a bundle of letters and a photograph. Treat all of it as one thing from the start.

Medal group

The medals awarded to one person, kept together. The combination says what no single medal in it can: where the person served, in which war, and sometimes for how long or for what.

Named medal

A medal carrying the recipient's details, such as a number, a rank, initials, a surname and a unit, stamped or engraved into the metal, often round the edge. Not every medal was issued named: GOV.UK records that the Golden, Diamond and Platinum Jubilee medals and the 2023 Coronation Medal were issued unnamed.

Attributed

Matched to a particular person through the records, so that the name on the metal and the entry on a medal roll or index card agree.

Clasp

A bar fixed to a medal's ribbon. The National Archives explains that awards for service in a particular battle within a war often took this form, so a clasp narrows down where and when someone served.

Provenance

Everything that shows where a group has been since it was issued: its box, the envelope it arrived in, letters, certificates, photographs of the recipient wearing it, and what the family knows about who it belonged to.

The house clearance page tells you to pull out medals and badges uncleaned and on their ribbons. This guide is the reason why. Badges are the loose ends of the same drawer, and regimental silver is a different thing again; both have their own section further down.

02

Why a named group is worth more whole than as metal

A named group's interest comes from things that cannot be weighed. The first is the person. A name on a medal can often be followed into public records, and those records can turn initials on a rim into a service history: the unit, the theatre of war, the date of arrival, sometimes a wound or a decoration.

The second is survival. The National Archives says that most service records for First World War soldiers were destroyed following bomb and fire damage at the record office, and that medal records are far more likely to have survived. For a great many of the people who served, the medals and the index card behind them are most of what is left.

The third is that originals are finite. The Ministry of Defence does not replace First World War medals, and for later service it replaces a medal only when it has been stolen, damaged or destroyed, never when it has simply been lost. GOV.UK says a lost medal cannot be replaced and points people to replicas from a medal manufacturer or dealer. An original is one of a kind, and the place it is valued as a medal is with a medal specialist.

The metal in a medal is common. Its name, its group and its survival are not, and melting destroys them. That is why the answer to the question at the top of this page is nearly always no.

03

Most medals are not gold, and many are not silver

People expect a medal to be precious metal because it looks bright and because it was given for something that mattered. Many are not. Medals have been struck in bronze, in silver and in base-metal alloys that look like silver, and the colour of a medal is not a safe guide to which.

• The Arctic Star, a Second World War campaign star first issued in 2013, was struck by the Royal Mint in bronze, which the Mint described as its traditional metal for these stars.
• The Diamond Jubilee Medal of 2012 was made of nickel silver, according to the government's announcement of it.
• The King's Coronation Medal of 2023 is made of nickel silver and plated in nickel, according to the government's announcement.
• Nickel silver is classed in the UK Trade Tariff as an alloy of copper, nickel and zinc. Despite its name it contains no silver.

A hallmark will not settle the question either. The Hallmarking Act 1973 lists stamped silver medals made before 1 January 1975 among the articles exempt from hallmarking, so an old medal with no hallmark may be silver or may not. The absence of a mark tells you nothing in either direction.

If a medal or a badge is marked as gold, or someone in the family always said it was, treat that as one more reason to take it to a specialist first.

04

Cleaning, remounting and splitting: how a group loses what it has

Some well-meant things do a medal group lasting harm, and they are easy to avoid.

1. CleaningMetal polish and a cloth take off the surface a medal has carried since it was struck, and on a named medal they wear down the lettering, which is the one part that cannot be put back. A dull, toned medal has not been neglected. Leave it as it is, dirt and all; the cleaning guide explains what polishing takes away.
2. Remounting and re-ribboningThe way a group is mounted, and the ribbons on it, are part of its record. Faded or frayed ribbons are not a fault to be fixed. If a ribbon has already been replaced, keep the old one with the group, and do not unpick a mounting bar to separate the medals or to put them in a different order.
3. SplittingSharing medals out between children or grandchildren is a natural thing to want, and it is your family's decision. Once apart, each medal is a single medal with a name on it, and the combination that told the story has gone. One way to give everyone something is to keep the group together with one person and share the research: copies of the index card, the roll entry and the photographs.

Keep the papers with the medals. The box, the envelope they came in, a covering letter, a photograph of the recipient in uniform, a discharge certificate: none of it is metal, and all of it is part of what a specialist looks at. Paper is the easiest thing in a drawer to throw away, so look carefully before anything is cleared.

05

Tracing the recipient from public records

You can do the first research yourself, at home, before anyone else sees the group. It is also the most useful thing you can bring to a specialist, because it shows the story has been checked against the records.

1. Read the edge firstTurn each medal and write down exactly what is on its edge or its back, letter for letter: numbers, rank, initials, surname and any abbreviated unit. Photograph it too. If there is nothing there, the medal was issued unnamed or the naming has been lost, and the papers that came with the group matter more.
2. First World War army service: the medal index cardsThe National Archives holds over five million medal index cards, series WO 372, made by the Army Medal Office towards the end of the war. Each records a name, rank, unit, regimental number and medal entitlement, and often a medal roll reference and the date the person first entered a theatre of war. They can be searched by name and number through The National Archives' guide to the cards; officers had to apply for their campaign medals, so an officer who never applied may have no card.
3. The medal roll behind the cardThe card points to an entry on the campaign medal rolls, series WO 329. The roll can sometimes add the battalion, and the battalion is what leads you to the unit war diary, which records what the unit did, although in most diaries only officers are named.
4. Royal Navy and Royal MarinesNaval medal rolls for the First World War are in series ADM 171. The National Archives' guide to campaign and service medals explains that their entries are in alphabetical order, so no separate index is needed.
5. Gallantry awardsIf the group includes a gallantry award, look for its announcement. The National Archives says almost all gallantry awards to British nationals were announced in the London Gazette, and that the announcement is often the only record of the award that survives.
6. Later serviceFor medals issued by the Ministry of Defence you can apply for information about a medal, including for someone who has died, and the record includes inscriptions. Service records of people who have died are held partly by the Ministry of Defence and partly by The National Archives, depending on the service and the dates; GOV.UK sets out which applies, and warns that a search can take up to a year.

When the name on the metal matches the card or the roll, you have an attributed medal, and it is worth writing that down with the reference numbers. When it does not match, or the letters on the edge look different from one another, do not try to explain it away. Tell the specialist; a mismatch is something they need to know.

06

Badges and regimental silver

Badges come in every metal. A cap badge, a shoulder title or a badge given on discharge is judged first by what it is and whose it was, and only then by what it is made of. A sweetheart brooch in the shape of a regiment's badge may be hallmarked gold or silver, or it may be gilt or plated base metal; the mark decides that, not the design.

Some badges are as traceable as medals. The Silver War Badge was awarded in the First World War to service personnel discharged because of sickness or wounds, and The National Archives' guide to First World War soldiers explains that its rolls can be searched by name, regimental number or badge number on Ancestry, a paid service. A numbered badge that can be matched to a person belongs with a militaria specialist, and a badge that came with a named group belongs with the group.

Regimental silver is the trade's name for silver made for, presented to or used by a regiment or its officers' mess, and for private pieces engraved with a regimental badge or a presentation inscription: cups, salvers, centrepieces, napkin rings, cigarette boxes and flatware. As silver it is read like any other. A British-made piece usually carries a full set of hallmarks, but mess silver made in India or elsewhere abroad, and small or early pieces, can be part-marked or unmarked; the hallmarks guide explains what to look for. What sets regimental silver apart is the engraving.

• A presentation inscription naming a person, a unit, a date or an event ties the piece to a history a militaria collector may want, in the same way a name ties a medal to its recipient.
• A regimental badge engraved on a piece is worth recording even without an inscription, because it places the piece with a unit.
• Trophies and centrepieces can be loaded, with thin silver over a filled base, so there is less silver in them than their weight suggests. The weighted and loaded silver guide explains how that is established.
• An inscription suggesting that a piece belonged to a mess or a regiment, rather than to a person, raises the question of how it came into private hands, because mess property may still belong to the regiment. Find out what you can, such as a sale or presentation record, before offering it anywhere, and expect any buyer to ask; the identity and provenance guide explains why.

Assaypost buys silver. A plain spoon with a regimental badge and no other history may be worth little more than its metal, but crested mess flatware has collectors of its own, so it is flagged rather than assumed to be metal. A piece with a presentation inscription or a unit's history is flagged too, before any offer, and you can have it back at that point for a specialist to see.

07

Where Assaypost fits, and where it does not

Assaypost buys gold, silver, platinum and palladium by post. It is a metal buyer, not a medal specialist.

• A named medal that arrives in a parcel is listed by name and flagged to you as possibly worth more whole, before anything in the parcel is priced as metal.
• Nothing is cleaned, cut or taken apart, and its ribbons and mounting are left as they came. The terms rule all of that out before you have accepted an offer.
• Ask for it back and it comes back by tracked, signed-for post at our cost, for a medal dealer or an auction house to look at. If your offer has already been made, you are sent a fresh written offer for the rest, and the first offer stays open on its original terms while you decide.
• An unnamed medal is set aside and flagged to you as well, and is not priced as metal until you have had the chance to ask a medal specialist about it. If it turns out to be base metal, there is nothing in it for a metal buyer at all.

Better still, do not post medals at all. Nothing needs posting to get an answer: if you are unsure whether something in a box is a medal, a badge or a medallion, send photographs first and ask what it is before it leaves your house.

When you go to a medal specialist, look for a dealer or an auction house that holds regular sales of medals and militaria, and ask how they would sell the group and what it would cost you. Ask for the group to be kept together and described as a group. Take the research you have done and the papers, because both are part of what is being sold.

08

Seller risks and exceptions

• A group weighed in with a jewellery box. A buyer who puts everything on one scale treats a medal as a lump of metal. Take medals out of any lot before it goes anywhere, and if they have already gone, ask for each one to be listed by name.
• A group split before anyone has looked at it. Once medals have gone to different households they are hard to bring back together, and the group cannot be described as a group until they are.
• Replicas mixed in with originals. Replica medals are made and sold openly, and GOV.UK points people towards them where an original cannot be replaced. A family collection can hold both, and only the original carries the recipient's history.
• A name that does not match. A medal whose naming disagrees with the records, or looks altered, is a question for a specialist and not a problem to hide. Say what you know and what you do not.
• Medals in an estate. Medals left by someone who has died are part of what they left, and who can decide what happens to them is the same question as for their jewellery. The probate guide covers selling before a grant.
• The specialist route has costs. Commission and sometimes other charges come off what a group fetches, and the right sale can mean a wait. That is worth knowing before you go, though it is rarely a reason to melt a named group instead.

09

When not to use the metal route for medals

This route suits very little in this guide. It can suit a hallmarked silver or gold piece that happens to carry a regimental badge but has no name, no inscription and no history, once a specialist has seen it and said so. For everything else, go to the specialist first, and come to Assaypost only if they tell you the metal is all there is.