Can anyone help ID this...

Found in a 1840s hut site.
Looks to have been gold plated on the face side.... got the heart pumping when the remaining bit hit the sunlight

Bottom one is easy a 2008 Centenary of Scouting $1, legal tender. Top.. no idea, the middle could be the back of a button where the attachment ring has broken off???

Dihusky said:

Bottom one is easy a 2008 Centenary of Scouting $1, legal tender. Top.. no idea, the middle could be the back of a button where the attachment ring has broken off???

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Almost certainly a button (didn't know we were part of the Roman Empire)

goldierocks said:

Dihusky said:

Bottom one is easy a 2008 Centenary of Scouting $1, legal tender. Top.. no idea, the middle could be the back of a button where the attachment ring has broken off???

Click to expand...

Almost certainly a button (didn't know we were part of the Roman Empire)

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Yes, that figure on the front does look rather Roman... pity the detail is so worn.
The dollar coin is just for scale, so its fairly large for a button... perhaps a badge.
It would have been pretty shiny and conspicuous when new. The gold plating that is left on it is still highly lustrous.
I think the maker is SS Adkins from what I can decipher on the back... the other wording Im not able to read well

Looks like SS EDKINS to me.

Interesting none the less. Possible it had a pin and was a pin badge of sorts?

Samuel Sabine Edkins comes up in Google search. A British world globe maker by the looks. Perhaps theres a link there somewhere

Thanks mate, Ill do some searching.. :Y:

I found this tidbit about SS Edkins, who was apparently a silversmith before marrying the daughter of the globe maker, Thomas Bardin, in 1832.

"The globe production of Thomas Marriott Bardin was taken over by Elizabeth Marriott Bardin (1799-1851), his daughter, in 1820, a year after her father's death. After her marriage in 1832 to the silversmith and member of the Cutlers' Company, Samuel Sabine Edkins, the globes were sold with the label of 'S. S. Edkins, son-in-law to T. M. Bardin'. A son of Edkins' (from an earlier marriage) joined the firm in 1848, at which point its name was changed to S. S. Edkins & Son'. A few years after S. S. Edkins's death in 1853, the firm was closed."

Still searching, but it seems Edkins is a South African name. Could it be a button from the Boer war perhaps?

Cheers,
Megsy

Could that say "Salisbury" going back from the SS? The globemakers SS Edkins & Son were located in Salisbury Square, London.
It's hard to make out, but looks like it could possibly say Salisbury. In which case, that may have come off a globe.

Maybe something like this... This is a Bardin globe circa 1795 that later became SS Edkins & Son.



Cheers,
Megs

Thanks Megs, Ill follow up on your hunches,
Cheers.

Well Ive drawn a blank on this button, theres no record I can find of S.S. Edkins making gilt buttons.
Heres a slightly better pic showing SALISBURY..(maybe).... something..

Best I could do

Yeah, there are google references to SS Edkins, but nothing I can find to tie him to that button.
Apparently he was a silversmith and member of the Cutlers Company in London.... so I was thinking maybe a membership button of sorts. I drew a blank following that trail...dunno. :/

Definitely says Salisbury. I suspect it's off one of his globes. Just a guess btw. Unless he was a button maker, I think it's a knob or a dial thingy.

Lots of speculation... but what about the figure on the front... whats that about ?

If someone can come up with a pic of this thing, then theyre a real supersleuth.. :Y:

Im reading SS Adkins with Salisbury to the left, struggling to make out the right side.

I think the man with the spear is astrological. The ancient Greeks used a man holding a spear on lots of their zodiac signs. The maker could have used that idea for himself.

I can see astrology and globes having a link.

Just to add... this was found at a site dating back to 1840. A government surveyors hut, the first dwelling built at the present location of a country town in SA. I doubt if they would have been carting around a big globe with them at the time. Old paintings of it showed it to be very basic.

OzzieAu said:

Just to add... this was found at a site dating back to 1840. A government surveyors hut, the first dwelling built at the present location of a country town in SA. I doubt if they would have been carting around a big globe with them at the time. Old paintings of it showed it to be very basic.

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Well I reckon a globe made in 1795 would have held its worth in 1840 and the following few decades. Worthy of research, Megsy has provided a good hunch as you say. Check UK sites or just ask an old Pom and see what that yields :lol: the answer is out there and I reckon Megsy's club house leader at the moment :beer:

Ive also thrown it across to the guys on AMDRH forum as they also have a knowledgeable button crew who may be helpful.
I will follow the globe theory as well... :beer: