Can anyone Id this button?

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Any help would be appreciated identifying this awesome gilt button.. I'm guessing early to mid 1800s and military???
 
It's hard to make out the letters on it to narrow it down. I'm guessing that is an R on the right. What do you think the other one is?

They had 'Volunteer Rifles' units in various towns and had something similar to this button - around 1860 - 1880's.

Was the button found in SA or WA, by any chance? Here are two from there. Not the same as yours, but similar in design.

1622110247_sar.jpg


South Australian Rifles

1622110281_albany_defence_rifles.jpg


Albany Defence Rifles.

There were a lot of different ones depending on the unit, and without that other letter it's hard to narrow it down.

Good luck finding that one. :)

Cheers,
Megsy
 
MegsyB007 said:
It's hard to make out the letters on it to narrow it down. I'm guessing that is an R on the right. What do you think the other one is?

They had 'Volunteer Rifles' units in various towns and had something similar to this button - around 1860 - 1880's.

Was the button found in SA or WA, by any chance? Here are two from there. Not the same as yours, but similar in design.

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/13534/1622110247_sar.jpg

South Australian Rifles

https://www.prospectingaustralia.co...es/13534/1622110281_albany_defence_rifles.jpg

Albany Defence Rifles.

There were a lot of different ones depending on the unit, and without that other letter it's hard to narrow it down.

Good luck finding that one. :)

Cheers,
Megsy
Yea cheers megsy, found in Vic and I was assuming it says A R but I can't seem to find exact one online..I've found quite a few now similar, guessing they're police/military related possibly, going on other finds and site.
Here's another couple for shits n giggles
 
RE: the awesome gilt button..

The font is GOTHIC "Old English" style. The last letter is unmistakingly an "R" however it's difficult to be sure about the first letter because of its degraded condition. It seems to lead with what looks like a crescent shape and there are 7 Old English" style letters that when drawn commence with that shape.

They are "C" "E" "G" "O" "Q" "T" "U"
 
You know, that button tripped a switch inside my head yesterday. The shop was dead because of Covid, and so I sat there like a dog with a bone searching international historical button and antique sites for military and livery buttons, as well as different types of Gothic and old English fonts to try to ID it :lol:

Mrs D left me alone and walked off in disgust as she so often does when I go off on one of my Aspy tangents. It pains me to say that I can't identify it :(

The Crown suggests military or official, I too settled on an R for the last letter rather than a K. But the first letter also has the potential to be a badly corroded stylized U, which for a while there lead me to believe that it may have been from the Ulster Rifles, until I exhausted myself looking at their various historical buttons to no avail. The words on the back of course appear on many such buttons, attesting to their claimed superior quality, but the only ones I found with the exact same lettering and the shortening of the word Standard to STANDD with the last capital D being smaller, were on American buttons. Of course, different countries also made button parts for other countries over the years too.

What often makes such ID hard too of course is that going back to colonial days we had so many people come here from so many different countries, that it could have been worn on the clothing or carried in the possessions of a settler or prospector from any other country in the commonwealth at that time.

The clue may be in the detail of the crown itself, as although I know very little about historical buttons, I have collected many of Victoria's (and other states) colonial era stamps over the years, and some times the only way you can tell an issue for sure is either by the type of paper used, and/or the detail of the crown used in the watermark. Rarely do official issue items just put in any old representation of a crown. Its shape and adornments are unique.

I get so much joy out of trying to ID some of the stuff from many of our members that sometimes I think I should sell the 5000 for a dedicated coin/ relic detector and stop looking for gold instead :)
 
The buttons from post 6

are Aboriginal Mounted Police Buttons

Here is a link

https://archaeologyonthefrontier.com/2020/09/03/buttons/

The Aboriginal Mounted Police Units are a big of hidden history the NSW Gov, woukd like the keep quite about.
Basically the government of the day employed the Aboriginal Police to assist with the white settlers moving onto local indigenous lands.
The Units were not local tothe areas that were being settled and just eliminated any opposition to the white settlers.
I came across this hidden history while too researching a button that I detercted and the Common at Hill End a few years ago,
I found one of the first pictued buttons
 
Goldpick said:
I think you will find it says VR (Victoria Regina), as per the same/similar pictured treble gilt button on the left

https://www.prospectingaustralia.co...127_screen-shot-2021-03-20-at-12.01.28-pm.jpg

Gee, I don't know Goldpick. I looked at a heap of Gothic/Tudor/Victorian/Old English scripts and fonts yesterday and couldn't find any V's that were anything like whats left of the first letter on mineallmine's button find above. It clearly has a "Handle" (for want of a better term) on the front of it like the U in the script that Casper listed above
1622255677_gothicscript.jpg


A larger image of the first one in your post above doesn't have this handle or similar serif at the top right.

1622255754_vrbutton.jpg


It also looks like mineallmine's button may have been one with numbers on it. I could swear that looks like a corroded off 4 on the right, and god knows what else on the left.
 
What makes this search even harder is that whatever you type into a search engine it gives you too much American stuff. Even when you type words like, British, English, Australian, Queensland, Victorian, Regina, Queen, Monarchy, New South Wales, South Australia etc, etc, you get bloody American posts!
I'm not quitting yet but "gee", it's hard!
 
That's true Flash Jack. I do my searches first in google.com.au rather than google.com, then also look in images and search with a .au at the end. Sometimes I even go into advanced search and search a particular country and/or search word. Having said that, sometimes you find Australian stuff popping up on overseas websites. It's a bit like detecting for deep biggies and missing the small stuff, or detecting for shallow small stuff and missing any biggies. You're just left wondering what you might have missed :lol:
 
Sandta said:
A bit off topic...
Have seen BIG tattooed (names of their kids) on some blokes in this type of script
Never been able to read any of them :/

Down the pub the story probly changesto fights won..... in jail... people killed lol
 
Hi all...

Came back to this thread after a few days off and went back into the interminable search of gilt buttons - arghh!
I'm with you Deepseeker! Once lost in the search, time disappears and you suddenly realise you've been at it for hours! Your eyes are almost bleeding and you sidetrack to some weird and wonderful info too!

I haven't found the darn button yet, however, I did find this interesting piece of info that could help in future to date some buttons!
I thought it could be interesting for others too.

1622354750_royal_cyphers.jpg


1622354777_info.jpg


Cheers,
Megsy
 

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