✅ SOLVED US Naval button?

[dagwood67]

Hi
I found this gold gilt brass coat button with a US Naval Officers image on the front and the back stamp says ?EXTRA QUALITY? in a style that is indicative of mid 19th century buttons.
Does anyone know if this is a true naval button or a civilian copy? Not sure if they had civilian copies of military buttons that long ago..thanks!

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Diving for Pleasure and Treasure - Grab it through Amazon!

[TheCannonballGuy]

IMPO (In My Professional Opinion), your button is indeed a civil war era original US Navy uniform button. Although having a round-top wing is usually a strong indication of the button being a civilian-usage imitation (a "Fashion" button), your button has several redeeming indicators:
1- It is clearly genuinely gold-plated, not mere "golden finish."
2- The rope-border passes through the loop on the anchor's top.
3- The "Extra Quality" backmark is written is what is called Serifed lettering. That fact is a strong indicator (though not 100% proof) that the button is from the early-to-mid-1800s.
4- During the civil war, the need to rapidly mass-produce literally multi-millions of uniform buttons caused the Quartermaster Department to temporarily suspend the regulation requiring buttons to be backmarked with the name of the manufacturer (such as Scovill) or supplier (such as Horstmann).

For anybody here who doesn't already know what Serifed lettering looks like, examine the diagram attached below. The serifs are small hooks, blobs, or tangs on the ends of the letter's body. In this diagram, the serifs are shown in red. But note, the person who drew the diagram missed reddening the "blob" on the top end of the lower-case letter "a" and the lower-case "c". I believe this diagram was first posted here in the What-Is-It? forum by our esteemed fellow relic-ID helper Creskol.

 

[dagwood67]

This is such great information! I really appreciate all of your effort in this answer!