The high price of selling a Victoria Cross

But there were only two bidders in the room.

What an embarrassing muck up.Expensive muck up.

I don’t think anybody ever found out. I have no idea what the reserve was, nor can I recall where the bidding started. But there were only two bidders in the room.

😮 How much extra did that add on ?

Indeed so, Simonspitfire. I was in the sale room!

Only two bidders. One from the RAFM. The other an agent recruited by RAFM to bid on their behalf.

Don’t forget the £110,000 the Nicholson’s VC fetched on the day, would not probably have been reached, had the RAF Museum not bid against itself in the room!

The buying, selling, collecting and historical researh of military medals is not a small, obscure field of interest. One needs only to visit the site of The Gentleman’s Military interest Club, where, literally, thousands of medals and ribbons, and awards are avidly collected, traded, bought, and sold. One of the military aviation awards that generate considerable interest are the Pour le Merite awards/medals, many of which were won by some of Germany’s most famous WWI aces. There are numerous threads related to the VC. It would seem that a large amount of these awards are no longer in the hands of the original families. There ARE stories of some of these medals being re-united with the families. often at no cost, or charge to the family, by some generous collector, who had paid a considerable sum for the medal(s).

Andy

I certainly wouldn’t dispute that. Although you didn’t specifically say, I am assuming that she was happy with the sale.

It would seem that not everybody is as from that article,

“The VC had been in Pte Godley’s family since he received it from King George V at Buckingham Palace in 1919. When he died in 1957, he left the VC to his wife, Ellen, who handed it down to their son, Stanley, who in turn passed it to his own son, Colin, 16 years ago. But Colin Godley’s decision to sell the medal, which went to a private and unidentified collector, split the family and left the war hero’s daughter, Eileen Slade (nee Godley), “totally devastated”.
Mrs Slade, 89, from Clacton, Essex, said it was “like losing one of the family” and has been inconsolable since learning of the sale. Her son, Andy Slade, told the Telegraph: “It could have killed her, to be blunt about it. She is beside herself. She wanted the medal to go either to the Royal Fusiliers Museum or stay in the family. She didn’t think anyone should be making any money out of it, simply be because of how it was won.””

Malcolm and Wings43 and Snapper

This is certainly the present situation and, of course, one should be free to dispose of ones property as one sees fit. The award of a medal is how the nation acknowledges the service given to this country and the recipient has a tangible artefact which can be displayed should the recipient wish. It is not intended that any monetary value is attached to the physical medal at the time of the award although certain awards do also attract financial benefits, I am sure we would all agree these are wholly inadequate. The IWM state “The Victoria Cross was deliberately intended to have little actual value. Its value lies in what it stands for and what people do to earn it: be extremely brave.”

Why would any recipient want to sell their medals? Presumably only because they need the money. However, this only becomes a viable option, by which I mean a meaningful amount, to a certain class of awards and the existence of collectors.

I wonder how many recipients actually want to sell their medals if they could meet their financial needs in some other way. Over the last decades many groups have fought for the recognition that they deserved to be recognised by the making of an award. I am fairly sure this was not done with one eye on the financial value that these medals may one day acquire.

Snapper raised a very valid point, and my father was also one of the “millions” and did not “claim” his medal(s). However, it is the market that determines these things and this thread is about the VC of which, relatively speaking, very few have been awarded. To many collectors the attraction may be the scarcity of an item with an eye on the future value increasing, this is certainly true of most “collectables”, although fashion has a say as well. So why would someone other than a museum or military unit whose interest are obviously not monetary based, want to buy a VC?

Some VCs have been bought by individuals and then loaned to museums, many have been bought by Lord Ashcroft who has also funded the display of his collection at the IWM.

This website has a large amount of information regarding the auction and location of VC medals.

http://www.victoriacross.org.uk/vcross.htm

The obvious fact is that with the nature of the award and its scarcity together with the existence of collectors the prices will continue to rise and after the first sale the benefactor is no longer the recipient or the family of the recipient.

Further complications also arise.

On a number of occasions an award has been made to a group, such as to Q ships and for the Zeebrugge Raid. Here individuals receive the medals on behalf of a group. I do not know about these specific medals but clearly an issue could arise. As Andy pointed out in an earlier post there are occasions when two people are awarded individual VCs but others who were with them were not. This gives rise for debate and obviously this becomes worse if significant amounts of money become involved.

The original Royal Warrant allowed for the award to be forfeited however in 1920 King George V felt strongly that “no matter the crime committed by anyone on whom the VC has been conferred, the decoration should not be forfeited. Even were a VC to be sentenced to be hanged for murder, he should be allowed to wear his VC on the scaffold.” Although the warrant has not been amended no further forfeitures have occurred, but then maybe none were warranted either. I doubt that Queen Victoria considered that this medal would acquire the value it has today or maybe the Warrant would have been worded differently. Nor is any recipient likely to foresee the motivation for selling his medal several generations down the line. Look how society and its values has changed just in our lifetime. Many of our laws need modifying to bring them up to date to cope with modern life.

All these problems can be avoided by doing exactly what the Americans do with the Medal of Honor. In the USA it is illegal to sell a Medal of Honor or to wear one or claim you have been awarded one if you have not.

For once I think the Americans have got it right, along with the other benefits that go with that award.

Paul

Absolutely spot on Mrs Nicolson.

I see your VC and raise you a million 1939-45 Stars. Without denigrating the ‘above and beyond’ of those who were recognised ‘For Valour’ I’m uncomfortable with the notion that someone, like my grandfather, was nothing special despite having joined up in August 1939 and leaving his new bride at home as he went all around the UK then onwards to North Africa. My father met him at the age of 3 in 1946 when he came home. Of course he was nothing special, he was one of a million.

Just as an aside, Claude Castleton, VC, was serving with Aussies and the AWM holds his VC. His house is about a mile from where I am sitting now, he was English. The other VC won by a Lowestoft man, Skipper Crisp, is a mile the other way, in the care of the town hall. Were I a holder of the VC I would sell it if I needed the money or for the benefit of my family. As Rob McKinnon, my friend’s grandfather told me when I was a lad and asked why he never asked for his medals he said he’d rather have had a few bob.

(Million is a figure of speech in this post)

Good point Andy and Wings and Malcolm. The quote from Mrs Nicolson is exactly how I would regard the situation.

Mrs Nicolson told me, just before the sale: ‘It is a piece of metal that represents his bravery. Selling that piece of metal doesn’t mean that his bravery is being sold, too. Or his memory. Even when it is sold, my late husband will still be James Nicolson VC.’

I think Malcolm’s view is spot on here.

If you have earned the medal then you should have the freedom to do with it as you please, if that means selling it and setting up a nest egg for your kids then why not. The medal is just a lump of metal albeit loaded with symbolism but it is the act of bravery and award that is most important. If a veteran or the veterans children choose the comfort of a secure financial future over a medal then it is there choice. The example of the inter family wrangling however does show how complex things have become.

The medals are issued to the individual as an acknowledgement of their service on behalf of their nation. They are issued so the individual may have some tangible way of showing that they served – so as I see it if an individual’s service earned them the medals (bearing in mind that military pay isn’t exactly overly generous and the job itself can be inherently dangerous) then the individual is justified in owning the medals and disposing of them as they wish. Sell the medals, bequeath the medals, donate to a museum etc. that is the individual’s right. The nation may wish to set up funds to make sure that some types of medals that are awarded for conspicuous bravery etc. are retained as part of its heritage however as the individual, not the state earned the medals then it remains the individual’s or their legal heirs’ right to dispose of the medals as they wish.

Not forgetting the killer Porsche.

How about that all medals remain the property of the Crown and when the recipient dies the medals automatically pass to the recipient’s unit museum or another suitable museum.
In the case of posthumous awards these would be for the lifetime of the receiving relative.

We are going to use the money to make a visit to Mons on the centenary of the battle and also to help with the trips we make each year.”

Over a quarter of a million pounds will buy many years worth of annual trips to Belgium.

Do I detect an air of sarcasm in that last quote?

In Australia the Australian War Memorial has made it a policy of acquiring all VCs awarded to Australians as they become available. It relies heavily on private philanthropy but so far this worthwhile endeavour is continuing to work to preserve these in Australia both for the nation and for the memory of the individual VC recipient.

What a terrible outcome.

At least the medal is in a safe place.

As this item would show there is no real value to be placed on bravery. It is priceless beyond doubt. God bless all who it is bestowed upon.