The Coin Badge

The legend is that the first Texas Rangers cut badges out of Mexican coins.  Legends, being what they are, are easy to remember and hard to authenticate.  However, the Texas Ranger museum says this about that:

The first Texas Ranger badges were made for individual Rangers from Mexican coins at their request. Some were probably made by jewelers, others may have been made by gunsmiths or metalworkers. The legend of Rangers cutting them out These first badges were used as a means of identifying Rangers in the midst of feuds and disputes that might involve several law enforcement agencies, or where hired guns were introduced. Photographs taken in the 1870s through the 1920s show that there was a great variety of badges and that comparatively few Rangers wore badges.

Still, the idea of a badge being cut from a coin appealed to me, and last year, I was plundering around in a shop that had some coins, and I spotted some foreign coins that the merchant said were made from pure copper.   I bought a couple of them, and asked my metalworking son if he'd ever thought about making a badge.

He took the coins and said he'd think about it.  Then, I forgot about it.  Art takes time, and what I was asking was way out of his comfort zone.

This morning when he came over, he showed me his work.

 
IT's smallish, as most coins are.  It measures 1.5 inches with a pin on the back.  I'm very pleased.  It's lightweight, very distinctive, and it weighs a whole lot less than the dinner plate badge the Sheriff makes me wear.

Yeah, I like that a lot.  I'll have to start wearing it when I play cowboy.