Vintage 1960s-1970s Lee County Georgia Sheriff Tin Litho Special Police Toy Badge Pin New Old Stock on Card 🚔

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

⭐ A Round Star for Lee County, Georgia

This is a tin litho pinback, black ground, about an inch and a half across, with a big yellow five-point star printed across the face. A red ring reads SHERIFF'S DEPT. across the top and COUNTY along the bottom. Down across the star's lower point, in red script, it reads Lee, with GEORGIA set in solid caps just above. It's a toy badge, sized for a kid's shirt pocket, not a working part of anybody's uniform. They seldom turn up for sale, carded or loose.

The card underneath is doing its own job. A red banner across the top reads SPECIAL POLICE BADGE, and beside it a cartoon motorcycle cop in a white cap and big goggles leans over his handlebars with a city skyline behind him. JAPAN is printed small in the corner. Badge and card come sealed together in a poly sleeve, the way they hung on the rack.

🏛️ The Little Seal at the Center

Look close at the middle of the star and there's a tiny round medallion: an arch on columns with a figure standing inside it. It's a miniature of the Georgia state seal, an arch held up by three pillars for Wisdom, Justice and Moderation, with a soldier standing guard underneath. Whoever drew this button's art was quoting the state's own seal, shrunk down to fit inside the star.

📜 Lee County's Own Story

Lee County is real, and it's old. Georgia's legislature created it by acts of June 9, 1825 and December 11, 1826, and named it for a Lee, though which one is a fair question. Some say Richard Henry Lee, the Virginia congressman who in 1776 moved that the colonies "declare themselves free and independent." Others say it was Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee III, the Revolutionary cavalry commander. The county's own historical marker tells it both ways, so I will too. The first officers were commissioned May 14, 1827, Nathan Powell among them as sheriff, the very office named on this button. The county was bigger in its early days too: its original ground later became Randolph, Stewart, Quitman, Sumter, Terrell and Webster counties, plus pieces of Marion and Clay. The county seat today is Leesburg.

🗓️ When These Were Made

Nothing on the card gives a year, but the rest of the family does. The same card design carries a New York button copying the NYPD patch adopted July 1, 1971, and a San Francisco button copying the SFPD patch added around 1970. That puts this whole line of cards on the dime-store racks in the 1970s, Lee County right along with them.

🚔 Badges Kids Really Got

Dime-store tin badges weren't just toys sitting on a rack. Real sheriff's departments ran junior deputy and youth programs, swearing kids in at fairs and school visits and handing out belts and badges of their own. Sheriffs gave tin badges just like this one out as prizes in their youth programs, too. A kid who got handed a little star like this one walked away standing a bit taller, and that's the other half of what a card like this carries.