Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Nickel plated Savage watch fob

This is my most recently acquired watch fob, I took a chance on it being original just from a couple poor pictures. I found it has a maker's mark, which did not show in the pictures, with that I think it is original nickel plating, most of these don't have a maker's mark. I couldn't tell what it was plated with from the pictures. It didn't have any black toning so I thought it probably wasn't silver. I took it to a local coin shop and had them scan it with their metal analyzer gun and it is nickel plated. I also had them check a couple of the small Savage pistol watch fobs, they are silver plated. On all tested there was enough wear that the underlying metal also showed up in the scan so the purity of the plating metal couldn't be determined.

The lettering at the bottom is doubled showing strongest on the top of the middle letters in 'SAVAGE'.




discussion/S. D. Childs & Co. Chicago Schubal Davis Childs started the company in 1837 and it was later run by his son, S.D. Childs, Jr., who for some unknow reason started to go by just his initials.....

I had the coin shop check three others for me a few years ago, one was bronze gilded (top left) and the two engraved ones are low carat gold plate. This shows the base variations I know of, there are engraved examples of the left facing version with SAVAGE in the headdress known, including one gold plated. The 'SAVAGE RIFLES' and 'Panama Pacific Exposition' ones seem to be the most common.


There is an example of the left facing version with SAVAGE in the headdress pictured in Bailey Brower's book on Savage pistols that looks like it's nickel or silver, page 241.

The bronzed one, upper left, is stamped 'Schwaab S&S Co. Milwaukee' (WI), as is the one that is not a Savage but of a similar design, lower right, the rest don't have maker's marks, I did a post on those a few years ago - topics/11006218
Schwaab Stamp & Seal Co. history They did the tokens for the 1904 World's Fair and Savage Arms may have found out about them there. They were the largest maker of watch fobs around that time.

Here's a comparison of the Schwaab, the S. D. Childs and an unmarked one, at first glance they look identical, as if they were made form the same die, but there are small differences in Schwaab marked one. The other two aren't exactly the same, but that might just be due to die wear and the slight doubling on the S. D. Childs one.

Unfortunately, now when using this site for hosting pictures, they not only have a maximum size limitation but recently started reducing that resolution by a lot when the images upload, the limit is 2Meg. The above picture was done on a scanner at 600 dpi and resized down to just under the maximum at 1.9Meg and 4594x1618 pixels, after upload it ended up at 798x281 pixels - that's reduced almost 6 times, I can't find any option to not have this happen. They didn't do this before, look at pictures in the older posts, they fill the screen. I will soon be going to a different hosting service, at least when detail is required. It's very disappointing to see how poor these posted images are compared to how sharp the detail was starting out. There is enough detail to show the wear on the nickeled one that makes the Native American look like a little kid who was given a chocolate ice cream cone on a hot day.

(If anyone wants coin holders get crown size, ones for US silver dollars are too small. I did have to trim one out a little to clear the feathers of the fob with the round strap hole)

ADDED - another member here acquired the plated fob that was pictured in Bailey Brower's book and sent me pictures, they are also added in a new post farther down.

Yet another interesting rabbit hole...

Cool!

Very nice!

Nice info! Thanks Gene.

Another member here acquired the plated fob that was pictured in Bailey Brower's book and sent me pictures, they are also edited in on the end of the first post.

Very interesting Gene, TY for sharing

A couple more.

From old, not so good pictures from it's previous owner -

If someone else has it now I would appreciate better pictures.

Here's one from an old thread that was posted by TomA, it looks to have the same writing, can anyone make out what it says?

Link to the old thread - topics/11006218
Another related thread - topics/16526429/fobs-stamps

L-R SAEAA

Purely a guess??
Savage Arms EAA (Initials?)
The E looks dominants so could be last name?

Gotta start somewhere.

Schwaab S&S - Schwaab Stamp & Seal, In 1881, the Northwestern Stamp Company is founded in Milwaukee by Andrew Schwaab. A major portion of Schwaab's early business was in the metal engraving area, where highly skilled engravers fashioned unique badges of all kinds.

S.D. Childs & Co. - Schubal Davis Childs, The business was started in 1837 by Schubal Davis Childs in Chicago
and continued by his son S.D. Childs, Jr. The firm remained in business well into the twentieth century.

The varieties in these examples is interesting.
Updating/changing the master stamp(s) must have been fairly straight forward.

I can't wait until the pistol fob thread...

I have..

Want me to post up a pic, if I can find one? I think I took one.

They're in an old post that I put a link to above - look at the bottom of my last post, it's the bottom link.

Aha.. I did take pictures.

I wondered about those.

Very interesting; guess I need to add something else to my hunt.