Vintage 1960s-1970s Special Police Toy Badge 🔴 Sauk County Sheriff's Dept Wisconsin Tin Litho Button on Original Card Japan

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

🔴 A Sauk County Special, Still on the Card

Here's a little piece of Wisconsin off the dime-store rack. It's a round tin litho button, red rim, black shield outlined in yellow, SHERIFF'S DEPT. arched across the top and SAUK COUNTY WIS. anchored across the bottom. Still pinned to its original yellow card, sealed in its poly sleeve, red banner across the top reading SPECIAL POLICE BADGE. It's a toy, sized for a kid's shirt pocket, and these never left the card to find out how a shirt pocket treats a badge. And they're rare - carded or loose, a Sauk County one just doesn't come up for sale.

The card art is the same character you'll find across this whole family of badges: a motorcycle cop in a white peaked cap and big driving goggles, gloved hands on the bars, a hazy city skyline behind him. Down in the corner, small print reads JAPAN. That's where these were printed in tin for the American dime-store trade.

🌲 Sauk County and Baraboo

Sauk County sits in south-central Wisconsin, carved out of Wisconsin Territory in 1840 and formally organized in 1844. It's named for the Sauk people, who had a village there. The county seat is Baraboo, first settled by Abe Wood back in 1838. It went by the name Adams before Baraboo won out, became the county seat in 1846, and was chartered as a city in 1882.

Baraboo's biggest claim to fame is the circus. The Ringling brothers grew up there, and from 1884 to 1917 the town was the headquarters of their circus, and a few others besides — enough that Baraboo earned the nickname "Circus City." The Circus World Museum still stands there today, holding the old circus wagons and what's said to be the largest library of circus history in the country.

The county is also home to Devil's Lake State Park, takes in part of the Wisconsin Dells, and is Aldo Leopold country too — the setting for A Sand County Almanac. These days the Ho-Chunk Nation is Sauk County's largest employer. That's a lot of Wisconsin packed behind one little button.

🪶 What's on the Badge

The button itself carries a shield in black, outlined in yellow, set against a red field. At the center, in profile, is a Native American man in a full feathered war bonnet — a red face, white feathers tipped in red and black, a small medallion at the collar. SHERIFF'S DEPT. runs across the top of the shield, SAUK COUNTY WIS. across the bottom.

🗓️ When These Were Made

Nothing on this one carries a date, but the rest of the card family gives it away. The same card design also turns up with a New York City button copying the NYPD patch adopted in July 1971, and a San Francisco button copying a patch the SFPD added around 1970 — which puts the whole line, Sauk County included, on the dime-store racks sometime in the 1970s.

👮 Junior Deputies, Safety Patrols, and the World This Badge Lived In

There is a real history standing behind every mid-century toy badge. This was the era of the junior deputy and the school safety patrol: sheriffs' offices swore children in as honorary junior deputies at fairs and school assemblies, safety patrol programs — running strong since the 1920s — pinned badges on generations of schoolchildren, and a visit from an officer with badges to hand out was a fixture of American civic childhood. Sheriffs gave tin badges just like this one out as prizes in their youth programs, too. A Sauk County Sheriff's Department badge belonged to that world. When a child pinned one on, the game borrowed its seriousness from programs that were entirely real — and that is part of the history a survivor like this one still carries.