Civil-war-22 wrote:
> I really just think it quite odd the large amount of people that find these in all parts of
> the US where confederate and union armies set foot on.
Bcs123 wrote:
> The facts are they were used by not only cw troops but civilian's as well due to
> the long production runs of the design
When the exact form of a particular "relic" was not invented until after the civil war, it's flatly impossible for that exact form of relic to have been in use during the civil war. There is rock-solid proof that the exact form of buckle-shield found by Eboy1960 was not invented until 1892. I've giving Creskol and Kuger the "main" credit for that information. All I've done is find a copy of the US Patent they mentioned, and make a post-able copy of the inventor's diagram in that 1892 Patent. View the diagram from it, below, and you'll see that what it shows is identical to Eboy's buckle-shield, except for lacking a heart emblem on it.
The earliest known version of metal buckle-shield was invented and patented in the 1870s (see Patent-diagram dated 1879 and an example, below). That earlier version was made of thick solid-cast brass ...and it didn't have a hinged loop on its end. The 1892-patented "improved" version was made of thinner, "stamped" sheet-brass, one end of which was folded under itself to hold a swiveling loop. As I said, you'll see that its form and construction is identical to Eboy's find. It didn't exist in 1861-1865, and therefore it cannot have been used by either soldiers or civilians in that time-period.
Despite what is said in two civil war relic books, the inventor's 1892 US Patent (#466,959) diagram shows it absolutely is not a "Confederate blanket-roll buckle." So, unless you are a collector of 1890s horsegear, please do not pay $265 for the one currently being sold as a Confederate soldier's relic at an Internet auction, nor even $15 for the ones frequently seen on Ebay.
