Vintage 1960s-1970s San Francisco Special Police Toy Badge Tin Litho Button Pin New Old Stock Japan Original Card Collectible 🚔

Size: 4 x 2.25 inches ~ New Old Stock, still on its card. They vary a little one to the next.

A San Francisco Police Toy Badge That Dates Itself by Its Phoenix 🚔

Look at the bird. The shield printed on this little tin litho button is not a toy-factory invention. It is the San Francisco Police Department's shoulder patch — the phoenix rising from flame, the motto on its ribbon, SAN FRANCISCO arched over the top — and the SFPD did not sew that patch onto a uniform until 1970. The design itself was approved in 1969. So this carded Special Police badge, printed in Japan for the American five-and-dime counter, can be no older than the patch it copies: a 1970s piece from the last years of the Japanese tin toy trade, still on its original card as New Old Stock, carrying a San Francisco legend that goes back to 1852. And they're rare - carded or loose, a San Francisco one just doesn't come up for sale.

What Is on the Card and the Button

The display card measures 4 x 2.25 inches. A red band across the top reads SPECIAL POLICE BADGE in white capitals. Beneath it, on a golden-yellow ground, a cartoon motorcycle officer rides in front of a pale city skyline: white peaked cap with a cap badge, riding goggles pulled down over his eyes, a strap under his chin, dark uniform and tie, green gloves on the handlebars and a big round headlamp at the bottom edge. Small capitals in the lower right corner say JAPAN.

The button is 1.5 inches across. A red rim and a black ring frame a yellow-outlined shield on a deep purple-blue field. SAN FRANCISCO arches across the top with POLICE beneath it, and a white-headed phoenix spreads red and yellow wings over a burst of red and yellow flame. A two-part ribbon at the bottom reads OROENPAZ FERRO on the upper scroll and EN GUERRA on the lower one.

Read that ribbon closely. The city spells its motto Oro en paz, fierro en guerra. The button runs the first three words together and prints FERRO where the patch says FIERRO — a spelling that belongs to the toy, not to the department. The rider on the card wears no city name at all; the card leaves the town to the button.

The Patch It Copies: the SFPD in 1969 and 1970

The San Francisco Police Department began operations on August 13, 1849, in the thick of the gold rush, under Captain Malachi Fallon, who commanded one deputy captain, three sergeants and thirty officers in a city filling up with fortune hunters. For its first 120 years the department went without a shoulder patch. An officer's badge was, and still is, a sterling silver seven-point star, of a design basically unchanged since 1849.

Those stars were made at home in San Francisco, California, by jewelers and badge makers. Surviving SFPD stars in sterling silver carry the name of Irvine & Jachens of Market Street, with issue dates on the reverse such as 1913, 1915 and 1921; others were made by the Albert S. Samuels Co. Jewelers and by Morgen Jeweler.

The cloth patch arrived in 1969, when the department approved a design built from the city's crest, the phoenix and the motto. In 1970 it went onto both sleeves of the uniform. That is the image on this button. The toy leaves the silver star alone and copies the patch on the sleeve instead.

Gold in Peace, Iron in War: Where the Motto Came From

The motto belonged to the City and County of San Francisco long before it belonged to the police. It sits on the city seal adopted by the Board of Supervisors in 1859, which replaced a similar seal adopted seven years earlier. Where the words came from is a matter of legend, and two stories are told. One reads the 1859 date as a city bracing for the Civil War. The other traces the phrase to Cervantes — to Don Quixote and his instructions to Sancho Panza.

In January 1900 Mayor James Duval Phelan, a banker and art patron who served from 1897 to 1902, recommended that the city adopt a flag carrying the motto. More than a hundred designs came in, and artist John M. Gamble's won: a phoenix rising from flames, with the Spanish words on a black ribbon beneath. Phelan explained the words himself: "Gold is emblematic of the abundance of nature, and iron of the fortitude and courage of men."

Why a Phoenix: the City That Kept Burning

It is often assumed that the phoenix stands for the 1906 earthquake. The bird is half a century older than that. Between December 24, 1849 and June 22, 1851, gold-rush San Francisco burned again and again — six great fires in the count most often told, seven severe ones in others. The worst began on May 3, 1851 and destroyed about 2,000 buildings, roughly three-quarters of the city, with losses of $10 to $12 million, much of it uninsured because no insurance company yet did business there. The town rebuilt every time, and in 1852 the phoenix went onto its first city seal.

That is the legend this button carries in an inch and a half of printed metal: a boomtown that kept rising out of its own ashes, and a bird that became the emblem of the city, then of its flag in 1900, then of every police sleeve in 1970.

The Goggled Rider and San Francisco's Solos

The cartoon officer on the card is pure toy-counter adventure, goggles down and gloves on. San Francisco had the real thing early. The SFPD formed a motorcycle squad in 1909 for "stopping scorchers" — speeding bicyclists — and reckless drivers, and the unit has grown ever since. Its riders are still called Solos, because they patrol alone.

Made in Japan: the Tin Toy Trade Behind the Badge

The small JAPAN on the card is a chapter of history by itself. During the Allied occupation, from 1945 to 1952, Japanese export goods were marked "Made in Occupied Japan." Postwar agreements let Japan build a strong foothold in the American market, and tin toys were one of the ways it did it: flat sheet tin printed in full color by offset lithography, then stamped and formed into cars, robots, clickers and badges. Because the color is printed into the metal rather than painted on afterward, tin litho pieces keep their crisp graphics.

Collectors put the heyday of Japanese tin toys at roughly 1952 to 1962. After that, plastic became the material of choice, labor costs rose in a prospering Japan, safety rules tightened, and cheap toy making moved on to Hong Kong and Taiwan. That shift is what makes a 1970s tin litho badge on a JAPAN card worth a second look: it is a late product of an industry that was already giving way to plastic.

Five-and-Dime Counters and Sheriffs' Prizes

Carded tin badges like this one sold for pocket change through the variety-store chains — the F. W. Woolworth Company, the S. S. Kresge Company, Ben Franklin stores — and through thousands of independent five-and-dimes. For a child, a badge with a real city's name and emblem on it was authority you could pin to your shirt.

They did a second job, too. Sheriffs handed tin litho badges like these out as prizes in youth programs, part of the same world in which AAA clubs began organizing School Safety Patrols in the 1920s and millions of schoolchildren wore belts and badges to walk younger classmates across the street.

The Lore of the Rice-Paper Master Cases

A dealer who sold off a retiring friend's old store stock of carded Japanese Special Police badges described how they had come packed: the master cases were old rice paper, and the cases too were marked Made in Japan. Wholesale boxes of six dozen, 72 carded Special Police badges to a box with box, cards and badges all marked Japan, still surface now and then. It is the picture collectors carry of how these little badges crossed the Pacific on their way to an American counter.