..the blatantly gun damaged ones scared me enough, it had not occured to me that they might be making them like that.
Re; your ancestor ITK, it would have been horrid to find the medal on E-bay.
I have a French violin, circa 1800, that nobody knew where it came from, when my Grandad died, we got on the net, and tracked our roots, and it turned out that we came from a French traveller.
He must have been a wandering minstrel, as his roots were also linked to everybody with my name who is NOT related to me in the area.
It`s nice to think it`s his violin though, which it probably isn`t, but I like to believe it is.