4th Pattern rising sun Stokes Die
 

Hi! I'm new to this forum and thought some of you may enjoy seeing this pic of an actual Stokes 4th pattern rising sun die.

Very nice find
 

Well that's something I would have bought if I had seen it. How did you manage to acquire it?

I think these were sold at an auction ,just one half of a dye?

Rising Sun Stokes die
 

Hi! This was the master die that was presented for approval prior to manufacture. It is the positive half of the badge die and there was always more than one set of dies made. I have a lot of military dies in my collection some from the Boer war, Ww1, Ww2. A great piece of history.

Stokes Rising Sun badge die.
 

Due to family reasons I've been off the radar for some time. Now getting back into my Rising Suns. Stokes recently closed business in Ringwood (Melbourne) & moved their badge making to Sydney. A large number of dies were thrown into a rubbish skip. An enterprising rubbish collector spotted them & purchased the lot. They are now appearing at markets, on eBay & at auctions. Stokes have been out of military badge striking for several years & just concentrate on designing club lapel badges that they have manufactured in Taiwan. I contracted them to make an Expert's badge for the Victoria Police Fingerprint Branch. They modified my design & sent it to Taiwan.

In the 1970's I was fortunate in visiting their earlier factory. Very Victorian atmosphere. Shelves groaning with dusty old dies. Sadly no samples were given out.
Salty Melbourne Australia

hi
i also had the opportunity to go through the stokes factory. from memory it was in Richmond and i cant recall when that was. i remember rows and rows of wood shelves with hundreds of dies on them.
in one of the offices was a large safe. i had the opportunity to go through some of those items. not many military things but i did pick up a pair of gold plated, enamel and silver koala, officer collars (i assume) to the 24th Kooyong Rgt. they were in felt stokes presentation box. a note with them said something along the lines of "commanding officer presentation badges".
i wish i still had them and even a pic of them but sold them many years ago to a prominent dealer.
i also managed to buy some gold and enamel and silver and enamel obsolete nurses badges.
bc