"The Sailmaker's Badge": WW1 Royal Flying Corps identity disc made from 1916 British half crown

"The Sailmaker's Badge": WW1 Royal Flying Corps identity disc made from 1916 British half crown



Larger obverse picture
Larger reverse picture

Host coin: 1916 Great Britain half crown, KM818.1.
Obverse: planed off and engraved "2ND A.M. / ARTHUR PERRY. / 33274 /R.F.C.".
Reverse: Original coat of arms design, unaltered.

Ex- "acsb-rich", eBay, 11/25/2015.

A historically interesting subset within the collecting of engraved coins are the pieces that were made into identity discs ("dog tags") during the First World War, which fall under the more general category called "trench art". Often these World War I pieces were made with French silver 1- and 2-franc coins as hosts, but this example was engraved on a larger British silver coin- a 1916 half crown. Furthermore, the serviceman, 2nd Air Mechanic Arthur Perry, #33274, served with the Royal Flying Corps, the forerunner of the Royal Air Force. So this piece has a somewhat less common host coin and an early aviation provenance, which is great.

Wikipedia link: Royal Flying Corps

I am an enthusiast of "love tokens" and pieces like this because one can wistfully say, "ah, if this could only talk". Some of these engraved coins actually do talk- or at least whisper- little bits of their history.

What do we know of 2nd Air Mechanic Arthur Perry? Only a few things. He was born in London, Middlesex, England, in 1883, so he would have been about 33 years old when the coin above was minted, and no older than 35 when the engraving was done. (We can date the engraving to between 1916- the host coin's date- and 1918- when the RFC was absorbed into the RAF.) Arthur Perry married a woman named Edith in 1914 and his RFC appointment was as a sailmaker, so he would have worked on repairing the fabric that covered the aircraft of the time.

Below is a period photograph a Royal Flying Corps repair shop, from the Imperial War Museum collection. I tried finding a picture of an RFC sailmaker at work, but most of the pictures I saw of fabric-on-frame work being done was from the factories, with largely women workers. I saw some references to one IWM photo collection that sounded interesting, but it isn't online. Interestingly- but probably only coincidentally due to the spelling variance- that collection was under the name "PARRY, ARTHUR".



Thanks to @dadams for helping to refine and focus the research on this piece.

This was part of my last exonumia collection, which I recently sold to feed my primary "Box of 20" set. However, I am going to continue the exonumia collection in a slightly different way- I intend to collect holed love tokens and engraved pieces, and put them on my "Holey Coin Hat". (Which used to be the Holey Gold Hat in bygone days, but I stripped it of its gold during the recession.)

As such, I have kept this piece even after selling several other nice ones.

 

@laurentyvan - I agree. Better ol' balding George V got the whiz than that lovely coat of arms. And this way we have the date of the host coin intact, too.