✅ SOLVED Button with Eagle/Anchor Backmark?

[grasshopper]

Anyone ever see a backmark like this?

The front is plain.

I've found many buttons with backmarks that include a small eagle. But the back on this one looks like the front of some naval buttons I've seen. Found at late 1700s home site.

 

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[HuntinDog]

Don't know much about buttons, except I like them.
Yours looks like the guy attaching the shank to the button got it on the wrong side...
Great find

 

[grasshopper]

Don't know much about buttons, except I like them.
Yours looks like the guy attaching the shank to the button got it on the wrong side...
Great find

I actually thought so at first too. But that is definitely not the case

 

[paleomaxx]

Most likely the button manufacturer struck too many planchettes with the eagle/anchor die and didn't want to waste them so they were repurposed as civilian buttons. Perhaps they were anticipating an order from the US Navy that never came to fruition. It's interesting that the back mark isn't present on the front. I always assumed the buttons were struck between two dies just like coins which would impress an obverse and reverse simultaneously. This button would suggest that they didn't impress the back mark until the button had been destined for a particular finishing process (i.e. double gilt, treble gilt, silver wash).

By the way, that button is remarkably well preserved. That's a fantastic specimen you have there!

 

[digging440yrs]

 

[grasshopper]

Most likely the button manufacturer struck too many planchettes with the eagle/anchor die and didn't want to waste them so they were repurposed as civilian buttons. Perhaps they were anticipating an order from the US Navy that never came to fruition. It's interesting that the back mark isn't present on the front. I always assumed the buttons were struck between two dies just like coins which would impress an obverse and reverse simultaneously. This button would suggest that they didn't impress the back mark until the button had been destined for a particular finishing process (i.e. double gilt, treble gilt, silver wash).

By the way, that button is remarkably well preserved. That's a fantastic specimen you have there!

Thanks. It's weird cause the front is beveled so it almost seems like it was intended to be this way from the start. Unless it was re-shaped after the fact.

 

[G.A.P.metal]

Grasshopper
We find the same buttons around here N.Y. too.
Gary