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Old 21-06-21, 05:40 AM
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dumdum dumdum is offline
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Hi Mike

I showed your post to a long retired guy who worked in the badge industry. He has some wonderful tales to tell over a coffee (or something stronger!).

He told me that the punches used to create that backstamp were, unlike the punches that you would use to stamp your name on an article, positive versions of the letter. When the badge was struck the negative letters became on the die positive.

It was quite an easy mistake to reverse the 6 and the 9, much as you might do with an ordinary letter/ number punch set.

This is probably self-evident but I thought it was an interesting take on this error which probably wasn't picked up unlike they'd struck more than a few badges.

Those raised letters to the reverse of the badge were part of the hammer head and would have been unique to the BL badge. Keep an eye out for ones where they are a bit "off" and don't quite line up with the outline of the cut out badge.

You can easily date these to being made on a Monday or a Friday.....
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