[The Bandit]

Looks pretty good considering the smudging from photo copying. It has already been demostrated that the IBM Selecctric Composer does not match up with Word processor's text.

[mcg1969]

Well, I would say that "pretty good" is not good enough. You should see the latest results over at LGF, they were exact.

[struwwelpeter]

That is some very interesting engraving on that citation. Especially for 1972.

I was looking through some similar documents. Here is an example of a pre-printed form with the dates and name filled in by typewriter, circa 1978:

Here's a citation, typed on basically a piece of fancy paper:

Here's a more modern document, where the name and description are done simultaneously using a program:

Of course, a Silver Star is a significant award, which in 1972 may have merited the extra cost of a professional print job.

[supercat]

Not a good match at all, really. That two documents that are fully justified kinda sorta line up is to be expected, since justification will largely mitigate cumulative errors in font spacing.

I don't know whether it would have been normal for citations to be typeset or engraved, but it would certainly have been possible.

Indeed, I would think that in 1969 the only ways to produce a good looking citation would have been typesetting or engraving, and so that's what they would have done. In 1986, when the re-issue was produced, a word processor with a daisy wheel printer would have produced output cheaply which would have rivaled the quality of anything except hand typesetting or engraving in the late 1960's or early 1970's. It does not seem implausible that in 1986 a word-processed document would have been "suitable for framing" while in 1969-1970 the only way to get such a document would have been to hand typeset or engrave it.