Navy button

cgdigger

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This beautiful button appears to be an Albert 62, Navy, 1-piece with border, 13 six-pointed stars. The only difference is that while Albert lists 8 variations of the back, what's on my button's back - "Lewis & Tomes extra rich" - is not one of these variations. Rare and valuable variation? Any thoughts on how to remove the crud from the back without damaging the button (or the stain on the front, for that matter)? Any more information about this button from you experts out there would be most welcome.
 

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Awesome find!!
Good luck on the ID
 

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Nice button. Put some lemon juice in something like a Gatorade cap and just soak the edge that needs to be cleaned. That way you don't have to expose the whole button.
 

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Again, according to McGuinn and Bazelon's book it is listed as NA-44A, NA-62, NA-67A & NA 86A3. Lewis & Tomes, Birmingham, England & NYC. Edward Lewis and Francis Tomes were merchants and importers of jewelry and buttons. The buttons were made in England where Lewis was a merchant 1816-1833.The New York firm dated 1819-1826 as Lewis and Tomes but continued as Tomes and other names until their bankruptcy in 1878. No buttons are believed to have been manufacture for the firm after 1830.
With all that being said I think your button would date between 1816 and 1826
 

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Thanks all. I was asked to provide the recovery story as to another button I posted today, and since it's the same as this one, I'll post that story here as well. I lived in a condo in downtown Norfolk from 1994-1998. Much of the original city had been razed in the 50s and 60s, and converted into parking lots. Directly across the street from our condo were some parking lots that in 1998 were being torn up and converted into upscale apartments. I had detected the lots and found a few things, but there was lots of trash, the ground was difficult to dig, and all in all, it was kind of frustrating. One night - the night of the last episode of Seinfeld - I came home and noted that at one end of the lot they'd gone down maybe 8-12" in a strip maybe 30' x 100'. Well, my wife and I watched the show, it got to be around 9 PM, i was a little lazy and unmotivated, but I finally heaved myself up and went to check out the area where they had gone down. And am I glad I did! They had gone to a historic layer, with no modern trash at all, where every signal was an artifact. I found a big penny (1820), and 6 or 7 War of 1812(ish) buttons. I've posted most of those in the last couple of weeks, but they include this button, a general service US and an artillery button posted in this forum yesterday, a Navy and a Marine button posted yesterday in the Best Finds forum, and a Republique Francais button posted in the Best Finds forum last week. My best night of detecting ever. One last point - the only other thing I found, in addition to all this 1810-1820 stuff, was a bunch of tokens that I posted a couple weeks ago. I haven't had a good ID on those. They look modern, but how a dozen or so of the exact same tokens could be found scattered in the same area where everything else was from the same era, and not themselves be of that era, is beyond me. I've bumped that token post up one last time, and if anyone can give me a better idea of what they might be, I'd appreciate it. And thanks for reading this!
 

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After spending 15 minutes very closely examining the slight differences in the 8 varieties of NA-62 buttons shown in the Albert book, I'm certain your US Navy button's EXACT-SAME emblem is in that book, as NA-62-E.

Apparently, the NA-62-E variation was made in Birmingham England by button manufacturer Joseph Mann. He supplied those buttons to at least two different merchants/button-sellers, William Wallis and Lewis & Tomes, whose names were put on the buttons' backmarks as a form of advertising. The McGuinn-&-Bazelon book indicates Mann made buttons for A.W. Spies (of New York City), Wallis, and Lewis & Tomes. For example, a Wallis backmark says "No. 3 / W. Wallis / JM / Extra Fine"... JM meaning Joseph Mann.

Your "unlisted" button is another case of identical buttons from a single manufacturer having several different "re-seller" backmarks. A major example of that is South Carolina State Seal button SC-13, which has SEVEN name-backmarks, only one of which (Scovill) is a button-manufacturer, and the other six are military uniform sellers.

The reason your button is not listed in the Albert book:
Mr. Albert was a major collector of Historical buttons, and was a member of the American Buttonists Society from at least the 1940s until his death. Those folks were almost entirely handling NON-EXCAVATED buttons, because metal detecting for relics (and buttons) didn't become prevalent until the late-1960s. Eventually, relic-hunters contacted Mr. Albert about their "unlisted" (not in the book) finds, and to include those excavated buttons he published a Supplemented Edition of his book in 1976. The supplement is at the back end of the book. But the main part of the book was never updated.

Therefore, Daniel J. Binder, a button-collecting scholar, has published a book titled "Civil War Collector's Guide To Albert's Button Book." It contains many photos AND backmark info on civil war military buttons which do not appear in the Albert book.
 

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Looks like that book is going to be hard to find. I searched but only found one for sale at over $140.00. I don't need it that bad!
 

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put the button up-side down & put a few drops of lemon juice on the reverse, it will cup it, not harming the front.
 

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