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A late reply but I just saw this posting. I was the former owner of Graco Awards but don’t mean to speak for them, but federal law prohibits the commercial sale of any federal medal other than DOD medals, so most likely the answer wouild be no.
Further, there is probably no current manufacturer of the MOF. Here’s how the system works. Every few years, when there is a need for more medals, a contact is awarded for a specific number of medals at a contracted price to be delivered within a specified time period. When those medals are delivered, the contract is completed and terminated. Usually a medal such as the MOF is purchased so that a supply will last maybe ten to fifteen years. For most medals, there is no current manufacturer unless there is a current specific contract open. Contracts are not awarded for a period of time and medals ordered as needed during this period. For example, a company would not be recognized as "the supplier" for a set period of time.
I am interested in researching the different contracts for medals, are all contracts centrally issued? and where is a good starting place? I presume it is DLA.
I can’t answer the question here but there will be a seminar talk on the Presidential Medal of Freedom at this year’s convention.
The speaker will be Larry Watson. At the 2007 Convention in Houston, Larry’s exhibit on Joe Dimaggio’s Presidential Medal of Freedom won the Best of Show. It should be a good talk. He is also a member of the forum, username: Larry
John
Military medals are generally but not always contacted through DSCP (Defense Supply Center Philadelpia, the successor to DLA.) Sometimes contracts are awarded directly by the using agencies. DSCP buys everything that goes into the various depots, but agencies can buy directly from a supplier if the shipment is to go directly to the using agency. Non-DOD agencies (USPHS, EPA, DOT, etc) buy directly from suppliers. Some contracts are generated centrally, others may be "local purchase" and paid with a credit card by a local office. For example, the EPA office in Washington may purchase their expected annual usage through their contracting office, but nothing prevents a local office say in Los Angeles from buying directly from a local supplier. It’s a real hodge-podge of purchasing, and there’s no hard and fast rules.
I don’t think you can do any kind of research on contracts due to this method of buying, and also because I don;t think the central offices will allow anyone to go through their closed records. Frequently purchases are made on a non-competitive basis, they may get 1, 2, or 3 bids and award it to the vendor they believe will deliver the best product, or maybe in the shortest time frame. Sometimes they award based on the phase of the moon. Who knows? I really never understood some awards, and they would not discuss non-competitive awards or tell exactly why they were awarded as they were. I believe it may even been to spread the business around sometimes.
I was a Procruement Executive and familiar with the purchase of medals for agencies.
Information on contract awards is available in a limited fashion by law. You can get the contractor, award date, price (generally) delivery schedule or date, and if you ask, information regarding any ecconomic price adjustments to the contract (increases written in based on inflation or other circumstances) and degree of competition and if no competition, why not. Beyond that you must apply under the Freedom of Information Act where information will likely be withheld if it could provide ecconomic advantage to any other rival bidder.
Price might be withheld for current contracts if (for example) there is a price review clause which allows adjustments to the current price based on one or more ecconomic factors that might be affected by knowledge of the current price. That means if the Goverment might seek new prices to see if the current price is good they need not tell the price they are currently comparing to.
With those restrictions a review of medal contracts would be of limited value.
In addition, each agency acts on its own. SO while DLA handles MOST BUT NOT ALL Unified DoD contracts (that is the same accross all services) the services would handle their own contracts. Similarly EPA, State, the US Information Agency, (no longer in existence but their medals show up), DOC, DoT, etc would each handle their own contracts for their own medals. They might deal with DLA but the decision would be up to them.
For the Presidential Medal of Freedom, that would have likely been procured by the Executive Office of the President, which counts as an independent agency as far as Goverment Procurement goes. They might have gone to DLA and you could check there, but they might not have.
State Department is known to have purchased (on its own) 100 State Department Distinguished Honor Awards, their gold medal, when they only awarded some 10 medals a year. They apparently kept the remainder in a safe at Main State. So they would have no current contractor. In addition, while they abolished their silver and bronze medals, they still give the Distinguished Service Medal (a 2.5 inch 10 kt gold medal) to foreign recipients and high level senior foreign service officers within the Department. But they bought them bulk a number of years ago so stockpile those as well.
In Federal Procurement Regulations parlance there are some 140 – 150 entities that have independent authority to write contracts as "Agencies". As Medalnut said lesser organizations within those agencies could write orders to suppliers for medals of those agencies (Assuming we are talking more that DoS).
A long way of saying, I kind of agree with medalguy.
This one has caused a great deal of tooth-gnashing in the Air Force ("real pilots" vs. "drone pilots"), reminding me of the battles over the award of Air Medals to AWACS crew. But, since DFCs and Air Medals require "aerial flight", there were few options available when considering how to recognize the drone drivers.
Of course, there is always the option of revamping the entire awards system — throwing out most of the "who cares" awards that everyone gets (GWOT Service, Training Ribbon, etc, etc, etc, etc.), and actually making the command structure make hard and unpleasant decisions about who gets what. The system stinks and adding awards only makes it stink more.
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