NVNutcase,
Your button find features a design style that copies the reverse side of a U.S. quarter eagle ($5.00) gold coin, as also provided above by DCMatt and TheCannonballGuy. The gold coin design two-piece buttons apparently gained fashion popularity here in America and possibly abroad as well, in the second half of the 19th Century. Over the years I have noted and recovered a number of these attractive clothing buttons, seeing a variety of sizes from $1. gold coin on up to larger, and both the liberty head obverse design as well as the eagle reverse design. Brass faced two-piece buttons with tinned or japanned backs of steel, were in fact quite common on many styles of 19th Century buttons, even dating to the 1840's and 1850's for some designs. These gold coin style two-piece buttons appear to have come into fashion around the time of the American Civil War, or shortly thereafter. Recovered examples will turn up with greater frequency in context with 1870's coins and artifacts, with a decline in prevalence as the Turn-of-the-Century approaches. The high quality die stamping with sharp detail is something that we may note as well, as being a good indication of 19th Century production. By the 20th Century, changes in manufacturing and cost cutting of materials, generally lead to inferior quality and detail as is evident in most buttons of the period. Later period buttons bearing coin style designs, are more often seen to be European type coins or similar. The punched self shank as described by The CannonballGuy, rather than the wire loop shank, is also a good indication of more modern manufacturing techniques.
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/w...-type-i-gold-dollar-coin-any-history-age.html
The link provided by tamrock, to an earlier discussion involving the circular brass stamped disk featuring an upright eagle design surrounded by the advertising company of Taussig, Pollack & Co., is in fact the center portion of a two-piece Tongue & Wreath
buckle. The buckle dates to around the 1852-1855 period. The company had offices and various partnerships affiliated with William Taussig and associates in New York and San Francisco during the 1850's. The upright spread wing eagle with lettering encircling is indeed rather similar on the button posted at the beginning of this thread, compared to the center design on Taussig, Pollack & Co. and a couple other company marked T&W buckles of the period. However, there are
no clothing buttons ever known to have been produced for or by Taussig nor any of the companies bearing his name and partnerships.
CC Hunter
