I think, from the photographs, that the first two badges in post seven are completely spurious, they appear to be brand new rather than over a century old.
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Originally Posted by Toby Purcell
They look fine to me apart from the one with a white enamel surround, which from colouration alone is a sweetheart brooch. As for “suspiciously over-aged”, the conspiracy theorists seem to strike again. It’s worth remembering that the badges are over a century old and if stowed away in an old box one would expect them to tarnish, get dusty and age generally in appearance. The pin backs seem to have been quite commonly sold by some officers outfitters, perhaps to facilitate the switching of badges between garments. Interestingly some photos also show the smaller badge in use on headdress as opposed to the larger, although it’s unclear if that was merely an expedient measure because the larger badge was lost or unavailable to the individual concerned.
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