1980s Mongolian People’s Republic Honorary Medal of Combat – Type 3, Variation 2, Ulaanbaatar Mint, Rare Bronze Version, Official Issue

Description

Original Item – Only One Available. A scarce domestically produced Type 3, Variation 2 Honorary Medal of Combat, the Mongolian People’s Republic military decoration known in Mongolian as the Combat Merit medal and remembered among generations of Mongolian servicemen simply as the “White Horse.” Created during the major reform of the MPR state-award system in 1940, the medal belonged to the core group of decorations intended to recognize military courage and distinguished service in defense of the republic. Its mounted cavalryman raising a saber was particularly appropriate to an army whose identity had been forged by mounted warfare, from the revolutionary campaigns of the 1920s through the frontier fighting of the 1930s and 1940s. The design survived essentially intact for decades, but this example represents an important final socialist-era chapter: the Type 3 introduced in the 1980s and produced domestically at the Ulaanbaatar Mint, after earlier generations of the award had been manufactured in the Soviet Union.

This is the scarcer bronze Variation 2, rather than the familiar solid-silver versions encountered among earlier issues. The circular medal retains the classic relief of the galloping Mongolian cavalryman with raised saber above the rocky ground, surrounded by a deep red-enameled traditional hammer pattern border and suspended from the distinctive triangular red-enamel mounting. The reverse is characteristically plain and carries the individually applied serial number, while the suspension is fitted with the horizontal pin fastening associated with the later domestic production. 

For the specialist collector, this variation is important not simply as another Honorary Medal of Combat but as evidence of the transition from Soviet-manufactured silver awards to Mongolia’s own late-socialist state-award production. Earlier silver examples dominate surviving collections and the international market, while the domestically produced bronze version represents a distinctly different manufacturing period immediately before the end of the Mongolian People’s Republic. With its original enamel and clearly preserved serial number, is an excellent representative of one of Mongolia’s longest-lived military medal designs and a particularly desirable variation for a collection organized by type, mint and metal.