Pre Civil War USMC Button

[Brig]

This early USMC button fetched 261 bucks on eBay back in April...

[teufelhunde.ret]

These 15 star types are as hard as hens teeth to find, worth every penny. Hopefully member DAG will see this and recognize the back-mark, I don't...

[dag]

BEAUTIFUL! I love these old pre-Civil War 1-pc buttons. Definitely worth the money.

 

Unfortunate that the manufacturer didn't put his name in as part of the backmark, only "GILT", basically describing the finish. So many old buttons from this time period, with similar construction, were backmarked in a similar fashion - "GILT", or "TREBLE GILT", something like that. Hard to know exactly who made these. I will check my books when I get home to see if they shed any light on who made these early Marine buttons.

[teufelhunde.ret]

I went thru McGuinn body of work, no positive ID. That said, I would suggest it was made by one of Warerburys predecessors who were around since 1812. The back-mark shown does have some similarities with the earliest Waterbury buttons....

[dag]

There were 13 star, 15 star & 16 star versions of the 1-pc Marines buttons per Tice's and Albert's books, dating to the 1820's. It is interesting to note that in Tice's book, Uniform Buttons of the United States 1776-1865, there is a 13 star version with the exact same backmark as the button here - "GILT : ӿ : ӿ : ӿ : ӿ :". Tice states "It was probably made by Robinson in the 1820's." The front of that one also has a lot of similarities to this 15 star button.

[Airwolf]

for being over 200 years old, it looks great