I am very grateful indeed for all responses that have been made to this thread. It was most interesting to read about your OTC badges Keith, and I personally think you may well be on to something about manufactures applying overlaid titles to the existing badges of related regiments to possibly cut down on costs. Presumably the demand for OTC badges would have been much less when compared with their associated regiments, and so utilising badges/dies for these regiments with the addition of an overlaid scroll for small orders would make sense.
I was also very interested to read about your collection of Uppingham badges Stephen, and how only one has traces of the ‘Leicestershire’ stamping on the back. In my original post I wasn’t suggesting that this was a pre-requisite of any badge being a genuine Uppingham one, merely that the one badgecollector put up to the other
thread did have this but that by contrast the one I bought didn’t. I suppose such traces of the word ‘Leicestershire’ on the back of an Uppingham badge, or indeed a Leicesters one, is actually more likely to be connected to the force involved in the stamping process than anything else. Whether or not this, in turn, could be an indication of changes in machinery, and therefore a possible age of a badge, or simply the way the stamping machine was set up, I really don’t know?
I dare say your Uppingham badges are fine Stephen, even if you do have them in a variety of colours. I was concerned about the yellowish colour of mine in parts, because whilst this was in the places you would expect to have wear, it didn’t look like genuine wear to me but more like someone had deliberately tried to imitate it. The other thing was all that verdigris on the back, which I thought looked as though it had been applied with a brush, and again a yellow colour in places. I was suspicious mine had been tampered with, hence why I sent it back, but when I saw badgecollector’s Uppingham, and the similarities in construction if not in colouration, I then started to have second thoughts. Was the one I had had a genuine Uppingham after all? Had it just been made to look older than it was for some reason? I’m still not sure. I think I really need to try and see some more examples if I can, but it may well be I was too hasty in returning the badge in question – ah well,
c’est la via! Anyway, many thanks again for all the postings chaps, and if anyone else has further comments please do put them up.
Best regards
Martin