Hi I found this old charm bracelet while picking and it wasn’t at all what I thought. I just saw the links and it reminded me of the kinda flat link native necklace, so I tossed it in my bucket. Now that I have had a chance to to really look at it, it’s kinda cool. I was trying to date it and decipher what the charms were. Still working on figuring out a few. The clasp looks like it has a thumb lever but that’s just where a safety chain must have been. I thought it was a cool find and I just wanted to share
Very interesting! Seems to have military insignias, and the one is a caudecus (symbol used in medicine and also was used in 1902 by the US Medical Corp). On the middle right it looks like signal flags, maybe Coast Guard related? I’m gonna do some googling!
Is one an infantry insignia?
Looks WW2 era. Flaming bomb, Army Corps of Engineers, Medical, Cavalry, Infantry, Artillery, Signal Corps, Aviator…. Nice find.
Thanks, Steve!! My dad would have loved it; he was Navy in WW2. One of my nephews on hubby’s side just retired from the army, and had been Cavalry at one point.
Really cool find, CyanideRose18!!
Bottom one looks like the Distinguished Service Award insignia.
Thanks Ziacat! You are good with your google searching. I started searching and then my little one had me busy and I didn’t get far. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much
I thought it may have something to do with military but I wasn’t sure. I was gonna ask my FIL what he thought, now I don’t have to. Thanks so much Steve for helping me solve this mystery. Very much appreciated
Welcome! I have spare time since I’m off work a few weeks and hubby is healing. We’ve had quite a few people on both sides who have served, so it interests me. When my mom passed we found her dad’s military flag in a tub in a closet. He had been on the front lines in WW1 and died (not in the war) when she was little.
Makes you wonder about the story of the person who put that bracelet together.
I was thinking the same thing. I found an old pin that had someone’s name on it and did some research and found a relative to give it too. A couple of years ago I had Johnny Mike Begay’s great grandson (if I remember that correctly) buy a JMB cuff and ring from me. He said that he had always wanted some pieces that his great grandfather made but they were so expensive. I never wore them, so I thought they should go to someone who appreciated them. I purchased them for $50 on Poshmark five or six years ago. The girl said they were her grandmother’s and she didn’t want them. They brought me here back then to research what they were. Funny how things happen
Thanks so much Steve I am headed back there tomorrow. It’s such a shame to see the things that they melt.
That’s pretty amazing!
I love vintage charms. Those are neat. I have a few cool ones. I like the moveable ones! WWII charms are collectible.
I guess I don’t know your story. What are you picking and who is melting? You have my curiosity up. Why would someone melt nice wearable jewelry?
With all due respect @nanc9354 , I’ve sent a lot of (common) sterling silver (flatware, holloware, and some jewelry) to the refiner. Bottom line, NO ONE wants it or they don’t even want to pay scrap value. The older generations with good taste have for all practical purposes passed away and from what I’ve witnessed, most people from these newer generations don’t seem to appreciate such vintage things. That being said, the jewelry that is scrapped is typically the mass produced imported items and common un-repairable pieces. Most of the sterling jewelry goes to my sister for the flea market. And a lot of the refined metal likely goes to China to be made into new shiny bling jewelry for the new generations who will pay up to 500% markup. And so goes American taste and purchasing in the 21st century IMHO.
I hear you, but I don’t feel it’s just the very youngest generations; many people my age (born in ‘64) that I know are guilty of this. We have a friend who is an artist/carpenter who made us a coffee table from reclaimed late 1800’s barn wood. He said he’d much rather do this type of custom work, but ended up doing more carpentry since people just didn’t (and to be fair, couldn’t always afford it) want to spend much money on furniture. My dad had a furniture business that we sold (in the 80’s after he died), partly because the big cheaper chains were coming into the area. My hubby and I are still using my parents’ amazing dining table and chairs from the 60’s. But prices for beautiful items like these has increased so much we would probably not spend the money for an equivalent today.
My mom had a lot of wonderful antiques in her house that we had to sell after she passed (can’t keep them all!). Antiques definitely don’t draw the price they used to. It’s kind of sad. But my life has changed too; I have no use, for example, for a big china set, no matter how beautiful it may be.
Hahahahahah
Although…we do have something like that (prob not even as nice as Ikea) in our “office” that my husband had to put together; much yelling was involved.
Sometimes we use what we have lying around. I used to have a table made from one of those old heavy duty wood commercial cable reels.
My kids are sanding and lacquering some furniture from the sale of her grandmother’s house to furnish an air bnb they just purchased. Those heavy pieces still have a lot of life left in them but man is it hard to pull your chair in to sit at the table
I went picking again and you do have to dig through a lot of junk to find the gems. A ton of mismate earrings that I just gave up trying to find the match. I did find some cool stuff like these little earrings. They were so cute I had to stick them in my lil bucket