W&G CHANCE

[snaps]

Hello, found a flat button with this backmark, an only reference on the Web brought me to a London gun manufacture- were they briefly in the button business?? Thanks for looking an HH Snaps

 

[Mackaydon]

What else is written on the button's reverse?
There exists a "W&G Chance Extra Rich" button.
Don.....

 

[BullBat]

...and a "Fine Stande" (page 2 of the inventory, item #6120-001-1.41)

http://www.savannahga.gov/DocumentCenter/View/556

 

[snaps]

Thanks guys an yes Don it's got "extra rich" on it. Do you know if it's the same company as the gun maker?

 

[Spats]

...and a "Fine Stande" (page 2 of the inventory, item #6120-001-1.41)

http://www.savannahga.gov/DocumentCenter/View/556

Here is an example of the one mentioned on the attachment. It was dug in Hinds County, Mississippi. The only reference I ever found was to the London gun manufacturer.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Snaps asked:
"Hello, found a flat button with this backmark, an only reference on the Web brought me to a London gun manufacture- were they briefly in the button business?"

Amost certainly not. According to the best book on button manufacturers and backmarks, the vast majority of button backmarks tell the name of a clothing store or a tailor or other business... NOT the name of the button's maker. There are many hundreds of names in button backmarks (such as Hyde & Goodrich, New Orleans) but there were far fewer button manufacturers.

If you were willing to pay a button maker an additional price, he would put your company's name in the backmark, rather than the maker's name. (For example, we know the Scovill Manufacturing Company was the actual maker of all the Hyde-&-Goodrich-backmark buttons. Such backmarks were called "custom" backmarks, and were viewed by the customer as a form of advertizing. You can see why a tailor or clothing-store would purchase such buttons for the clothing he made, or sold. A famous example of that is civil war US Military buttons with the backmark "Brooks Brothers / New York."

 

[nhbenz]

There was a store in NY by that name that posted an ad in this old newspaper from 1821: https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/39631185/
It reads as seen below, but has many typos, hopefully the company name isn't amongst them:
W& G. CHANCE, 58 Pine street, have receiv - . ed per Euphralea, and now just land I, 50 groce pair Gilt and Black Snaps, or tubes for pelisses, coals

 

[snaps]

Thanks for all replies. Great info as usual, exactly what where looking for! Snaps

 

[namxat]

Hi,

Extra Rich is a quality mark on gilded buttons, the same "rich orange", "double gilt", "trbel gilt" ect.

Them maker is unkonw to me, yet these gilt buttons are ususally identfied as being from the first half of the 19th century and the center of this industry was London. so it is not totally out of question that the buttonmaker had something to do with the London gunsmith.

Greets Namxat

 

[snaps]

Namxat, thanks and I like your thinking!