Possible Fob

[Suzanne]

My name is sherri lang. My husband and i, at no charge, try to help soldiers' family members find their soldiers missing wwI, WWII, Korean or Boar war medals.

From doing this, we were asked if we could provide info on this object. From what we can tell it is not a military medal but maybe a watch fob.

Would you,, at no charge, please tell us what this items is or if you are familiar with the markings on the back please let us know what they mean so we can try and get a starting point.

the only thing i have is these two pictures, one is a picture of the front of the item, the other is a picture of the back of it.

thank you for considering this request.

fob back.jpg (46.17 KiB) Viewed 191 times

[Carolyn Sunday]

Yes, it is a Victorian English pocket watch fob. The other end with the swivel would hold the pocket watch which would go into the watch pocket of the vest, and the fob would remain hanging outside of the vest to be shown as ornamentation (the fob would have hung off of the end of a pocket watch chain, like this):
http://www.sundayandsunday.com/catalog/primary/3900p.jpg
There are hallmarks that can be seen from your image, if you can use a magnifying loupe to identify these marks I am sure you will find a lion passant (indicating the purity or fineness) for sterling silver content, a date letter mark, and a city mark. The city marks are: Birmingham (an anchor), London (lions head), Chester (sheaves of wheat), Sheffield (crown)- there are others too, we recommend "Tardys International Hallmarks on Silver" for reference. If you can get a close up image of the hallmarks it would be helpful. And no, you are correct, it is not military. The rose gold accent would have been applied sheeted gold. The date on the front won't necessarily match up to the date letter in the hallmark. The engraved date on the front might be when it was given or commemorate a special date for the owner, but I suspect it is very close in age to the date letter in the hallmark.
Hope that helps a little,

Carolyn Sunday