Military Medal

A medal given to a remarkable sailor who was given the honour of conveying Napoleon to exile in Elba in 1813 as a reward for his daring exploits in the Royal Navy has made a record price.

Spink are to offer the Indian Mutiny Victoria Cross awarded to Sergeant Major (later Lieutenant) Peter Gill of the Loodiana Regiment for saving the life of an officer and his family at Benares and seeing off 27 mutinous Sepoys with only his sergeant’s sword, on June 4, 1857.

This DFC medal group of a British Spitfire pilot who survived the war despite crashing and being given up for dead by his colleagues has an estimate of £8000-10,000 in Plymouth Auction Rooms’ November 21 sale.

This Russian military medal demolished an estimate of £10,000-15,000 at a recent sale held at Bonhams Knightsbridge.

Medals awarded to one of Britain’s greatest military heroes are still missing after being stolen from the Redoubt Fortress and Military Museum in Eastbourne.

A UNIQUE Falklands War medal marking the ‘phenomenally brave’ work of a bomb disposal expert has sold for what is believed to be a record price at auction.

A SILVER medal awarded to the Master of Admiral Lord Nelson's flagship HMS Victory, who was at the ship's helm throughout the Battle of Trafalgar is to be sold by Nantwich, Cheshire, auctioneers Peter Wilson.

ONE of the rarer acts of peace-time bravery saw the crew of the airship R33 awarded the Air Force Medal.They included George Ernest Long, whose medals and associated ephemera came up for auction at Lockdales of Ipswich on March 27.

THE Professional Footballers Association were active at Spink's latest sale, successfully bidding £210,000 to acquire a Great War Victoria Cross group awarded to Second Lieutenant D.S. Bell, Yorkshire Regiment.

THE first Victoria Cross awarded to a soldier in the British Army sold for £210,000 (plus 20 per cent buyer's premium) at Spink in London on April 22. The Conservative Party donor and VC collector Lord Ashcroft was beaten to the prize by an anonymous buyer.

THE Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft has reportedly paid nearly £1.5m for the only double Victoria Cross awarded during the First World War.

PICTURED here is a medal commemorating the taking of Porto Bello by Admiral Vernon in 1739. It was among the items stolen from a country house museum in south Derbyshire on the afternoon of May 20.

A VOLUNTEER at the Royal Signals Regiment Museum in Blandford, Dorset, has been jailed for 12 months for stealing £33,000 of medals and selling them on eBay.

LORD Ashcroft’s Victoria Cross collection – the largest in the world – is to go on public display following his £5m donation to the Imperial War Museum. The news comes as the museum has also received a donation from the Art Fund to purchase an important watercolur by Keith Vaughan (1912-1977) at auction.

Lord Ashcroft has been at the centre of a successful bid to recover 96 medals, including nine Victoria Crosses, stolen from a museum in New Zealand in December.

Two medals awarded to the same man during the Crimean War, but separated for many years in different collections, have been reunited after selling to the same buyer at Smith & Wilde’s March 21 auction of militaria at the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

Spink are to put the unrivalled Victoria Cross collection of Lord Ashcroft on display in an 11-day exhibition in their main gallery in April. The exhibition is a forerunner to what is expected to become a permanent public display in two years’ time.

THIEVES have stolen a collection of war medals Ð including five Victoria Crosses Ð awarded to 12 of New ZealandÕs most highly decorated servicemen. The burglary took place shortly after 1am on December 2 at the Army Museum in Waiouru.

CHARTERHOUSE auctioneers in Sherborne, have broken the auction record for a Military Medal group only two months after the previous one was set.

“WE will make a name for ourselves and Australia tomorrow.” This was how Captain Shout fired up his band of troops the night before the assault at Gallipoli in the First World War.