The Royal Scots V.Btns good or bad

[Dave S]

yes I must admit I only paid 4 quid for it, I was thinking of doing something creative with the duffers like turning them into keychains or something similar, plenty of opportunities for being creative

[Deejayuu]

Originally Posted by Dave S

I have been sorting through the badges I have bought and comparing them to known good examples I don't think I have done too bad and there were some good ones well worth having in there.
also many were very cheap and although I have a bundle of duffers I should be able to move them on as restrikes easy enough, also the guy's pictures weren't that good and in the hand, many were very nice, the lincoln 3rd vb i think is good for example comparing it to source i found, but then the odd nice one compensates for the duffers.

Dave,
i knew a fellow collector sadly no longer with us that had a Lincolns collection that would make your eyes water. His holy grail was a genuine 3rd VB Lincolns badge. 70 years of collecting he still did not have one in his collection he was happy with. He had many, many contacts as he was also a dealer so several thousands of badges passed through his hands. Shall we say, they are very rare.

[Luke H]

Originally Posted by Keith Blakeman

I don't know if it's just me but I find it really hard to differentiate between good and bad Royal Scots VB badges. I've just gone through all the main dealers listings and with the exception of a couple of 5th VB's on Geoff Newman's site where the metal looks spot on, all the others are filthy dirty, non-black patina loops or have re-fittings. The single metal doesn't help, nor does the font used on a couple. Taking all of them into account, there are not many out there with the exception of the 5th which appears to be the most common so that should give a good indication of their rarity.

Apologies this is bit later than originally promised Keith.

Here’s a bit of a collection of the 4th - 8th V.B. Royal Scots baddies i.e. those with St. Andrew and the Star of the Order of the Thistle design.

The 1st - 3rd V.B.’s Royal Scots wore different patterns.

First tip is to avoid is Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean!!!

This die features the usual Marsh-esque catalogue rounded letter ends. Indeed the fake Royal Scots die which spawned this line is in his catalogue.

That die has been used to create 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th V.B. fake dies.

There is another fake die for the 4th and 5th V.B.’s which features a very pointy and raised ‘O’ which to the eye appears too far from the V of ‘V 0L’. St. Andrew

As you mentioned good 5th V.B. badges here’s my voided one and a solid one from Geoff’s site. The metal, loops, strike are all spot on and they have a lovely depth to them.

First row - Davy Jones and his crew!
Second row - fake 4th and 5th V.B.’s, my genuine 5th V.B. (black background)
Third row - genuine 5th V.B.’s.

[Dave S]

Luke
i see what you mean now reading that, very interesting, it's true when they say a picture is worth a thousand words and a little education goes a long way