RCR badge-dating question for "the Rogue" (or anyone else)

[DavidS]

A Royal Canadian Reg. badge I picked up which I'd like to date or even get a maker name for, if possible, as it isn't maker marked. I am attaching a composite of the seller's eBay pics. (idara615).

The overlay stamping is very thin metal, only maybe a third or a quarter as thick as a Tiptaft overlay, and it has some flash left where the base of the crown joins the braid wreath on either side.

The overlay is also a different die: the Guelphic Crown is more turban-like, with wider shoulders and not as high as a Tiptaft badge crown (15mm x 14mm vs. 14mm x 15mm for the Tiptaft badge). The VRI lettering looks like the pic. on the Regimental Rogue cyphers and stars page (first row, left pic.), except the "R" is more condensed (11mm high but barely 5 mm wide at widest).

The star is most like the 3rd row, first left pic. of an 1894 pattern badge star.

My gut tells me this is a very early badge, pre-WW1 at least, but I'd appreciate your expertise.

[regimentalrogue]

While the Guelphic crown badges were in use between 1894 and 1927, narrowing the dates of specific variants is mostly a matter of instinct without any documents to back it up.

Thant being said, I would agree with the pre-WW1 assessment, both for the style of star and the very thin and flat centrepiece.

As for hazarding a guess at a maker, not enough of the regimental badges are marked to confidently align unidentified dies to makers.

[DavidS]

Thanks for the info., Mr. Rogue. Reading through your site and looking at the rest of my (albeit tiny by comparison) assortment of RCR badges, I've decided that if you tossed any 100 RCR badges on the table, you'd end up with 120 varieties.

I'm looking at my 4 versions of a 1925-1950s imperial crown, one Scully and 3 unmarked. Of the 4, at least 3 have overlay pieces which were struck from distinctly different dies. And while two of the badges seem to have an overlay struck from the same die (one is pretty well polished), the stars they are mounted on are from different dies (if looking at the backs counts). Except for the Scully badge, none of my stars' backs match the backs of any of the 12 badges pictured on the Regimental Rogue's imperial crown page.

I suspect that the RCR has actually used more manufacturers than it had badges produced!