THE MAY 2008 ISSUE OF MEDAL NEWS IS NOW ON SALE! MEDAL NEWS is the world's only magazine devoted to medals and battles. The May edition, out now and available from newsagents and our website, has many interesting features this month:
A family history
The final story of a military family
Killed by the opening salvo
Researching the man behind the medals
"A job well done"
The story of the Palestine Police
A Norwegian story
A memorial to a fallen British bomber crew far from home
For King and Empire
Newfoundland and the Silver War Badge
The unacceptable face of Victoriana
The Victorian fashion for turning medals into "useful" items!
REGULAR FEATURES:
THE EDITORIAL
NEWS AND VIEWS
MARKET SCENE
BOOKSHELF
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
ON PARADE
DEALERS' LISTS
MEDAL TRACKER
CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING
DIARY
Who do we think we are?
The second annual “Who Do You Think You Are?” Live (WDYTYA) show takes place at the very beginning of May (if you’re reading this before the event which takes place May 2—4 there’s
still time to get two tickets for the price of one, call 0871 230 1091 and quote medal24l!). Last year’s event was a huge success in terms of visitor numbers (20,000+ through the door) and whilst it wasn’t outstanding commercially as our products were too specialist for many people, it did give us an important insight into the interest that lies in family history and the potential that that might have for the medal world.
For years we’ve been attending the medal and militaria shows, building up a good rapport with the visitors and making some lasting friendships—such events have, over the years, proved very successful for us and now we are a regular feature at many of them—as much an expected attendee as any medal dealer. WDYTYA was a different proposition; suddenly we were confronted by literally hundreds of people all eager to know more about medals and their family’s history. We chatted to them, gave them the benefit of our “wisdom”, encouraged them to add their medals to Medaltracker.com, sold Medal Yearbooks and Medal News subscriptions and, after it was all over, got to thinking just how we could appeal to them even more and, perhaps, get even more of them interested in medals. To that end we have now produced a new DVD entitled What Grandad Won in the War—a very basic
guide to the medals and awards of World War I. It’s not designed to appeal to the likes of our regular readers—it’s quite simplistic and all of the information contained within it will be well known to us all, however, as we discovered last year what is well known to us (like where to find the naming on a medal for example) is not so well known to the novice—this DVD fills the gap and we are looking forward to launching it at Olympia.
However, all may not run as smoothly as we hoped, it seems that the organisers of the event have recognised that the family history market is more diverse than they first thought and this year they have, for some reason, decided to have “one event, three shows”
