schutzenfester

Between my Dad and myself we have all the Swiss Shooting Thalers. But our interest is in the shooting medals and not as much so in the thalers. Most coin collectors pursue the thalers before the medals for the fact that the thalers are categorized as coins. I concentrate almost entirely on medals, cups, other award types, postcards/periodicals, memorabilia, and thalers for schützenfests in that order.

I can't say I disagree with slabbing because I do not. I own many slabbed coins, a few medals and several modern Swiss Thalers. I agree with your rational in regards to preservation. Although I do not handle all my medals and do like viewing them close up with my eye and with a loupe. Looking through a slab piece of plastic is just not the same as I am sure you are aware. I have handled many schützenfest medals over the years, my Father even more. We have seen pristine medals and own pristine medals that have never been slabbed and still look like they did the day they were awarded. Many times preservation is in the "hands" of the one who owns the medal. With that said I doubt I would ever take a slabbed medal out of the slab just to be able to hold it. And as many, I buy the coin and/or the medal not the slab. I am a conservative grader, my father may be even more conservative and I have seen NGC and PCGS become more liberal in their grading over the years and in terms of schützenfest medals it appears the same in some instances. Plus how does PCGS and NGC grade medals? Based on what expertise? Based on numismatic criteria? I feel that shooting medals are vastly different than coins; deeper and more intricate engraving, induced patinas and so on. I am just glad that I started this lifelong journey of schützenfest collecting when I did and I have to thank my Dad for many years of teaching and the honing of my skills of collecting theses beauties as well as other schützenfest memorabilia. Just my two cents and IMHO. Another IMHO; your schützenfest medals, slabbed or not are very nice indeed!

Perhaps you are speaking of Kim's oval medal R894 from Luzern 1920. If this is the case, this medal is not altered, the pin back was how it was awarded. I forgot about the 1920 Luzern pinback when I asked the above question and I now assume that is what "altered" probably pertained to.

Out of curiosty, what specific medals to you speak of when you say you were not aware that altered medals could be slabbed?

The medals appear to be graded fairly. As we are all keenly aware, it is difficult to see every detail in a photo especially with the lighting of some of these. As I have stated previously, grading of shooting medals by a third party is out of the norm in this collecting field or at least in Europe and at most auctions. Certainly it is not the case here or with Zohars examples. I love to look at shooting medals close up and out side of slabs but I understand why some like and at times prefer slabbing. Most of all I am very happy to see there is a growing appreciation and group of collectors since for so many years schützenfest medals were only appreciated by a few, relative to coin collecting.

Very nice medals Kim and Zohar. Kim, I'm glad my grading was more conservative than NGC's (but close). Grading is a difficult art since it is subjective IMHO. I am happy when my customers are satisfied with their purchases. Thanks to both of you for posting pics of a few very nice Swiss Schützenfest medals.

Happy New Year everyone! Because I know a couple of you visit my website I wanted to let you know that I have added 20 items to inventory. These twenty items are a diverse group with many white metal pieces, a few paper jetons, silver and bronze medals, and some modern talers. Please visit my Photo Album page where you can view other shooting medals and many photos taken at the Bern Schützen Museum. Rod

Hello and I hope everyone had a great Holiday! I should have a few new medals added to inventory this week, please visit the site if you are interested. HiHo, I caught the mistake after looking at the pictures in my office. I came online to see that you made note of it but before I could make the correction. That is what I get for 'measuring once' as they say. Quite embarrassing but I did communicate to Texascoins regarding the mistake. Happy New Year to all.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

It is a beautiful medal. Your pictures certainly show it's great detail and condition!

Did you happen to see the first medal of the list? Not only is it engraved by Holy Freres but it also has a Swiss Miss as you describe.

Scottishmoney, I'm sorry the two you would be interested in are on hold. Hopefully in the future I will have a medal that piques your interest.

Thanks Kim! I think it is better than the old one too.

Thanks Art!

Thank you very much!

Well, after quite some time of inactivity and decision making, I'm happy to announce the creation and publication of my new website devoted to Swiss Schützenfest. It is called: Rod Moore Schutzenfest and it resides at shootingmedals.com. Please go there and bookmark it so you can return often. I presently have inventory of 12 pieces and since stock is extremely limited and difficult to obtain (for quite some time now) it is possible that I may have little or no stock at times but I will always attempt to have something available for sale. As some of you are aware, I'm am mainly a collector and not a dealer and have a decent collection of my own. My Father has a large collection and contributes substantially to the website in terms of stock and education to other collectors and myself (thankfully). We primarily have the site to get more people interested in Swiss Shooting medal collecting as a hobby. The site will not be listed in Google and Yahoo for a few months so I suppose so it may be harder to find via the search engines right now. Again, it is called Rod Moore Schutzenfest and the address is: htpp://www.shootingmedals.com Please let anyone you feel may be interested know about my new site. I would also appreciate it if you share your thoughts about the site and also let me know if you find any typos and/or other discrepancies and I will make the required corrections. I hope you find the site interesting and a web address you visit regularly. Best regards,

Yes, I am always willing to assist any way I can.

Yes, I don't believe I will use eBay. I too think their fees are high and for the low annual cost of a web site I can keep a few medals available at all times. Good inventory has been especially hard to obtain lately but I will do my best when I can. Glad to know you like the Swiss misses. I will keep that in mind for the future. Rod

Kim and Tim, I appreciate your words and sentiments very much, thank you. Rod

Kim, There have been some health issues with my Mother so my Dad has been on a hiatus for several months. I have had some turmoil in my professional life that has precluded me from doing the auctions. Once my Mom is better and all is back to normal and once I get a new web site (Geocities is gone as of end of October) I will commence once again. I may concentrate on eBay but I don't really like giving them as much money as they want especially when the customer base in somewhat limited. Auctions are not the best venue in my opinion and I believe the next venture will be strictly sales. But none if this is written in stone. Getting inventory for the web site as well as our customer has been very difficult. We get most of our inventory directly from Switzerland and it has been very slim pickings this entire year. We hope things change soon. We love our hobby and growing our collections but we also love helping others grow theirs as well as doing whatever we can to spread the schützenfest fever so to speak! I wish Scottishmoney would compete with the collecting, it will only help the hobby overall.

My Father and I have attended a couple of auctions here and abroad. We have participated in many auctions via phone, catalogs etc. I can honestly say that the slabbing of shooting medals is very rare. The slabbing of modern shooting medals is somewhat more common and slabbing of talers being the most common because they are considered coins. Some will say there are not coins since they only were considered 'coins' during the shoot. As Ian stated, most shooting medals have a high degree of artistic merit to them and putting them in a slab certainly takes away the enjoyment of experiencing the medal itself. I have been collecting for over 25 years and my Dad for over 45 years and we have very few slabbed shooting medals (talers) and even without having slabbed examples we still have likely some of the best condition medals owned. However, I have to say there have been a couple of accidents over the years but I can also say that the condition of most of our shooting medals has not changed enough to be considered noticeable by anyone including a 3rd party grading service. Please remember all the coins and medals that were kept so nice for so many many years one way or another before 3rd party grading services were around, how did they stay so nice? This is just my humble opinion and I certainly do not think it wrong of anyone who wants to slab, I have many slabbed coins and quite a few slabbed modern talers, a couple of slabbed 19th century talers but no slabbed 19th and early 20th century shooting medals. I just like them so much that I look at them closely often and the slab will prevent me from doing this. I do agree that slabbing of shooting medals will probably increase some interest in the hobby but I do not think it will result in an increase in interest for the true collector of shooting medals. As many people state often, buy the "medal" not the slab.

I would love some competition.

Let's keep this post alive. For now I will post a couple of pics from my visit to the Schützen Museum in Bern, Switzerland. I was there 2 years ago with my dad for a medals auction.

It will be our pleasure Kim and I hope we can oblige.

I very happy you like the medal Kim