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earlier). Horthy remained under arrest in Germany until the end of World War II. In 1945 he was liberated by the United States Army and arrested again, this time by the Americans. He was eventually released, despite the demand of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz-Tito to have him deported and tried in Yugoslavia for war crimes. He never returned to Hungary. By the irony of history, just like his former adversary, Charles IV before him, Horthy spent the rest of his life in exile in Portugal. He died in Estoril on February 9, 1957. After Horthy’s deposition, the new “government” was headed by the Arrow Cross leader, Ferenc Szálasi. Mass deportations, murders and terror began to rage in Hungary. In February of 1945 the Red Army captured Budapest after a month and a half siege. The quarter-century-long Regency era ended and thus closed the first chapter of the history of the Hungarian Order of Merit.

The author expresses his gratitude to Nudelman Numismatica Auction House, Budapest, Hungary for their consent to use the illustrations in this article. The author would also like to thank Peter Czink, Dr. János Szentvâry-Lukâcs and the Érdemrendek-Kitüntetések-Egyenruhák website, whose information and illustrations are used in this article.

Endnotes:1. In 1960s some former Hungarian military on emigration in Austria

ordered replicas of the Hungarian Order of Merit which they had been awarded prior to World War II. These replicas were worn on the military ribbon rather than on plain green ribbon.

2. On February 15, 1945 it was decided that the silver and bronze Signum Laudis medals would be conferred independently of each other. Considering that by that time most of the country had already been in the hands of the Red Army, that decision had no practical effect.

References:Czink Peter: “The Hungarian Cross of Merit and the Hungarian Order

of Merit,” [in:] Magyar Front, November – December 1999, Vancouver, Canada. http://members.shaw.ca/lweideman/nd99.pdf.

Érdemrendek - Kitüntetések - Egyenruhák [Orders - decorations - uniforms] (http://www.erdemrendek-kituntetesek.hu).

Kenyeres Dénes: Katonai kitüntetések a magyar történelemben [Military decorations in Hungarian history], Kecskemét 2004.

Klietmann Kurt-Gerhard: Pour le Mérité und Tapferkeitsmedaille [Pour le Mérité and Bravery Medal]. Berlin 1966.

Littlejohn David: Foreign Legions of the Third Reich, vol. 3.Makai Ágnes: Állami és katonai kitüntetések [State and military

decorations], 1992.Makai Ágnes, Héri Vera: Kitüntetések [Decorations], 1990.Nudelman 11. Orden-Auktion. 13. Juni 2011. http://numismatica.hu.Szentváry-Lukács János: Magyarországi rendjelek és kitüntetések

[Orders and decorations of the State of Hungary] (http://rendjel.myhunet.com).

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Vol. 63, No. 2 (March-April 2012) 25

As you start to accumulate medals, you’ll find that you’ll need some basic equipment and tools to further your study and deal with your collection. Most of the things you need will be fairly obvious, but some may not be. Of course, depending upon what you choose to collect, some of these will move up or down the priority scale.

First and foremost, you’ll need a good quality magnifier. You may be able to get by with a low-power magnifier if you’re mostly interested in checking for defects and just helping you get an overview of a medal. However, as you get into the details of maker’s marks or engraving, for example, you’ll find that you will need 10-power, or perhaps 20-power, magnification. The most useful magnifier is one with multiple lenses that can be used in combination. A good 20-power lens should give you all the detail you need, even if you want to determine the type of engraving tool used to name a medal. Whether or not you get a magnifier with a built-in light or measuring grid is up to you, but I find that the batteries on lighted magnifiers rarely last and they can be hard to replace.

Modern magnifiers may contain an LED (light-emitting diode) producing light focusing on what you are looking at. While you face the problem of batteries, such magnifiers often can produce a brilliant white light that can help you see detail and even distinguish among metal types. Where incandescent lights will give you a

COLLECTING 101: COLLECTING TOOLS

JEFFREY B. FLOYD

warm yellow cast, and fluorescent lighting will give you a colder bluish cast, the LED’s white light can come in handy, especially in situations where colors are not clear to the viewer. There are inexpensive LED flashlights that give your portability as well as all the light you need to see true colors and details. You might also consider an LED light for your work desk.

The next most useful tool is likely to be a micrometer or outside caliper. Precision down to about .1 millimeters should be sufficient for most purposes. Greater precision is available, but can be expensive. I have found that the simplest of micrometers work fine for most purposes. I’ve bought several over the years at gun shows and hardware stores. Micrometers with electronic read-outs can be most helpful.

Right after a micrometer, a high quality scale can be an important tool. When collecting world orders, decorations and medals, you often find them cataloged with their weights in grams. Knowing the weight of a specific piece of order insignia can help you quickly determine its authenticity and can help you, for example, distinguish between a piece that is in gold and one that is silver-gilt. Because the values of gold insignia are usually substantially more than silver-gilt insignia of the same grade,

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