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The Airman’s Badge Earned on Foot
How does a badge go from official to unofficial?
The Late Arrivals Club badge was created during the Western Desert campaign for RAF airmen who had bailed out, been shot down or force-landed, then walked back to their unit through the desert.
Their exploits became a valuable morale boost, and RAF public relations officer George W. Houghton gained permission from Lord Tedder to present them with a winged boot badge.
That permission applied only in the Middle East theatre during the campaign. Outside it, and after the fighting had ended, the badge was considered unofficial.
Fewer than 500 of the first type are thought to have been made. They were locally cast from aircraft alloy, with two loops on the back.
On this example, those loops have been removed and replaced with a German award stickpin, possibly from a miniature Panzer badge. German awards were often made in stickpin form for civilian wear.
It is a fitting alteration. The RAF men who earned the winged boot had been fighting Rommel’s Afrika Korps, so using part of a German tank badge to secure it adds a particularly personal twist.
A Naval Crown With Roman Roots
This week’s selection brings together a fascinating group of Merchant Navy and Royal Navy badges, including a Second World War service badge bearing the letters MN inside a rope border.
The badge may be small, but it represents the enormous contribution made by Merchant Navy crews during the war. Merchant ships carried food, fuel, troops and vital supplies across waters patrolled by enemy ships and submarines. The simple MN design became a quiet mark of service for the men and women who kept those routes open.
Another recurring feature across the collection is the naval crown. At first glance it looks like a conventional royal crown, but a closer look reveals a miniature fleet of sails, masts and ships worked into its design.
One of the larger examples shown here was used as a membership badge by the Royal Navy Old Comrades Association. More commonly, the crown appeared on Merchant Navy badges, cap badges and buttons.
The design has roots stretching back to ancient Rome, where crowns associated with naval victories were presented to successful commanders. Their decoration represented pieces taken from captured warships, providing visible proof of victory when paraded through Rome.
Over time, these captured ships and their fittings became stylised into the distinctive sails, sterns and mast-like points seen around the crown.
The naval crown had been used by Britain’s Royal Navy since the 1700s, but the Merchant Navy did not widely adopt it until after the First World War. Before then, merchant sailors generally wore the individual insignia of the shipping company or line they worked for.
That makes these badges an interesting record of changing identity. The earlier badges connected a sailor to one particular company. The naval crown helped create a wider sense of belonging to the Merchant Navy as a whole.
Also pictured are badges from individual ships and organisations, with anchors, ropes, ships’ wheels, waves and other maritime symbols picked out in enamel and metal.
They are modest objects, designed to be worn rather than displayed, but each carries part of a much larger story of ships, service and life at sea.
The Curious World of Cinderella Stamps
In philately, not everything that looks like a stamp was created to carry the post.
A Cinderella stamp is a small, usually perforated and gummed label designed to resemble a postage stamp, but with no official postal value. These labels have been produced around the world for advertising, fundraising, education, promotion and political propaganda.
On their own, many Cinderellas are relatively inexpensive. Found attached to an original letter or cover, however, they can add valuable historical context, visual interest and sometimes considerable extra value.
The group pictured includes six labels representing former Imperial German colonies and territories: Karolinen, Kamerun, Kiautschou, the Marshall Islands, Togo and German New Guinea. Each uses the same striking design, with a steamship at sea and the German imperial naval ensign in the foreground. Different colours distinguish the individual territories.
There is also a pleasing connection between their German subject and the name given to this branch of collecting. The Brothers Grimm published their version of Cinderella, Aschenputtel, in Children’s and Household Tales in 1812.
The other two labels show how Cinderellas could serve very different purposes during the First World War.
The purple St Dunstan’s label carries the appeal “Their Sight for Us, Our Help for Them”. It was produced to support the organisation’s work caring for servicemen who had lost their sight.
The far darker “Kultur Has Passed Here” label is a piece of anti-German propaganda. A mother and child lie beneath a burning town as an airship passes overhead, while a winged hourglass suggests that time is running out.
Neither label could have carried a letter. Yet both carried a powerful message, showing why Cinderella stamps can offer such a fascinating glimpse into the politics, causes and concerns of their time.
Halfpenny’s Hidden History
Most people who remember the old halfpenny will picture the sailing ship on its reverse. Fewer realise it represented Sir Francis Drake’s famous vessel, the Golden Hind.
The design was introduced in 1937, replacing Britannia, which had appeared on the halfpenny for generations. The Golden Hind remained on the coin until the final issue in 1967, and the halfpenny ceased to be legal tender in 1969.
Drake’s ship was originally called the Pelican. During his voyage, he renamed it the Golden Hind in honour of Sir Christopher Hatton, one of his principal supporters, whose family crest featured a golden hind.
Renaming a ship was no small matter. Sailors traditionally considered it unlucky, believing it risked angering the sea gods and bringing misfortune to the vessel.
Although the Golden Hind design arrived in 1937, older Britannia halfpennies continued to circulate alongside it. Bronze halfpennies, first issued in 1860, remained in circulation for 109 years.
The denomination itself had an even longer history. Official copper and bronze halfpennies were issued for nearly 300 years before the coin finally disappeared in 1969.
Do you remember the ship halfpenny?
A Market Find With Attitude
Small detecting finds make their way to Charing Cross Market most Saturdays, and this one is a proper curio.
It is a small solid hand, possibly silver, with the fingers clasped and the thumb pushed between them.
That gesture is known as the fig sign, or mano fica. It has carried different meanings in different places. In some contexts it was used as a charm for good luck, protection and fertility. In others, it was a rude or contemptuous gesture, so the meaning could change completely depending on where and how it was used.
That is what makes this little piece so interesting. One small hand could be a charm, an insult, a wish for luck, or a symbol of fertility.
There may also be a connection with the old phrase “I don’t give a fig”, though that origin is not certain. Some link it to the fig hand gesture as a sign of contempt, while others see “fig” simply as something small and worthless.
Either way, it is a tiny object with a surprising amount of attitude.
A Token of Lincoln’s Gratitude
With the Great War finally over in 1919, communities across Britain looked for ways to thank the men and women who had served. Many towns and cities produced local tribute medals as public tokens of gratitude and remembrance.
This example was presented by the citizens of Lincoln on August 30th, 1919.
The front of the medal reads “Served in the Great War” with the dates 1914–1919. Its design brings together symbols of service on land, sea and air, including a field gun, naval ship, aircraft and airship. In the foreground, a kneeling soldier receives a laurel wreath from a classical figure representing victory.
The reverse reads “Token of Lincoln’s Gratitude” and carries the city arms with the motto “Civitas Lincolniensis”.
The medal is housed in its original leather-covered presentation case. The lining inside the lid reads:
Presented
by the Citizens
of Lincoln
August 30th, 1919
Around 4,000 of these medallions were presented in mid-1919, making them an important civic tribute from the city to those who served.
Some tribute medals were also produced in gold, usually in much smaller numbers. These were often funded by a local lord, lady or benefactor, and were sometimes named or regimentally numbered to the individual recipient.
This is a particularly complete survivor, retaining both the medallion and its original fitted case.
Bed, Brass and Beyond
Military duty plates, also known as bed plates, offer a small but revealing glimpse into everyday regimental life.
Usually hung from a bedpost or locker, these brass plates showed that a soldier was away on duty and therefore unable to be present during an inspection of his bed, uniform and kit. Some were engraved with the word ‘DUTY’ on the reverse, allowing the plate to remain in place and simply be turned around when needed.
Early versions were often simple pieces of brass with a slot into which the soldier’s regimental cap badge could be fitted, along with a hole for hanging. Names and service numbers were then punched or engraved into the surface. Some plates also carry a maker’s mark, with F. Narborough of Birmingham among the best-known suppliers.
The Somerset Light Infantry example pictured dates from around the early 1900s. The larger Scots Guards plate, complete with its top loop, is believed to date from the 1930s, before the Second World War. This general pattern remained in use until the 1950s, when duty plates largely disappeared from military life.
Also shown is an unissued Green Howards plate, with ‘DUTY’ lightly engraved on the reverse but no soldier’s details added.
Many plates were melted down during wartime metal shortages, making surviving examples particularly interesting. As with medals, those linked to unusual units or notable service histories can attract extra attention. Their aged patina is usually best left untouched, unless active staining threatens the metal itself.
Cover Stories
Close cousins of stamp collecting, covers are, in plain terms, envelopes that have travelled through the post. They show stamps doing the job they were made for, complete with cancellations, routes, redirections and the occasional extra mark that turns a simple envelope into a small historical document.
Collectors often look for the unusual detail: censor marks, military signatures, charity labels, propaganda seals or anything that reveals the story of the journey. The South African air mail cover shown here, postmarked 8 April 1943, is a fine example. Addressed to officers and men of the London 59th British Red Cross Society, Bermondsey Division, it carries an official seal and an officer’s signature, yet was still opened, checked by a censor, resealed, and given a unique censor number on the reverse. It then appears to have been redirected locally, adding another layer to its wartime travels.
The Canadian cover, postmarked Toronto on 14 December 1911, has a different kind of interest. Alongside the regular postage stamp is a festive Muskoka Free Hospital for Consumptives charity label, wishing “Merry Xmas 1911” and “Happy 1912 New Year”. The label promoted free care for people with tuberculosis, then commonly known as consumption.
Money to Burn
At first glance, a 100 million mark banknote sounds like unimaginable wealth. In Germany in 1923, it was closer to a symptom.
This Reichsbanknote belongs to one of the most notorious episodes in modern economic history: the Weimar hyperinflation. After the First World War, Germany was under enormous financial strain, but the crisis accelerated sharply in 1923 after French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr. The German government supported passive resistance by printing more money, and the mark’s value collapsed at terrifying speed.
By the autumn, prices were rising so quickly that money could lose value between being earned and being spent. Banknotes climbed from thousands to millions, billions and eventually trillions. In November 1923, the Rentenmark was introduced to restore confidence, with one new Rentenmark equal to one trillion paper marks.
What makes this note especially interesting is the reverse. Once near-worthless as currency, the blank back became useful real estate for politics. Here it has been overprinted with a message from the right-wing Deutschnationale Volkspartei, or German National People’s Party, using economic crisis as campaign material.
So this is more than inflation-era paper money. It is money after money stopped working: a banknote turned leaflet, a financial object turned political object, and a small survivor from a moment when value itself seemed to vanish.
Five Bob and a Crown
Royal souvenirs can be grand, fragile or gloriously tiny. This Lesney Coronation Coach manages all three.
Produced for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the little die-cast procession captures one of the great ceremonial sights of 1953: the Gold State Coach, drawn through London with the new monarch inside. The real coach was already an antique by then, built in 1762 and used at every coronation since William IV in 1831. Lesney’s version turns that pageantry into a tabletop parade, with white horses, red-coated riders and a gilt coach that still has plenty of presence.
It is also a neat stepping stone in British toy history. Lesney, founded by Leslie and Rodney Smith after the war, would soon become famous for Matchbox toys. The coronation coach helped prove there was a hungry market for small die-cast models with big stories attached.
The original price of five shillings was not throwaway pocket money either. Fittingly, 1953 also saw the Royal Mint issue a five-shilling Coronation Crown, giving the sum its own royal echo.
Today, the appeal is easy to understand. It is part souvenir, part toy, part miniature stage set. And unlike a programme or postcard, it does not simply record the coronation. It recreates the procession, frozen forever at full ceremonial trot.
