Interesting FLL CCC gold

[Patrick W]

This is an unusual example but because of that the finish is really fantastic! This piece has a thin undercoat of nickle silver plate under the gold finish which you can see peaking through on the high points.
I have seen a number of FLL clasps with copper and brass undercoat but this is the first I recall with nickle.

The plate has just started to bubble slightly as you can see in the close ups but there are no areas of real loss. It appears this type of plating was pretty durable as there has been an impact to the right hand acorns causing the tops to be flattened off and loss to the gold but it has not breached through to the zinc.

Annoyingly and as is common with FLL CCC's the backplate fell out and the current one is a replacement.

This piece has a die flaw to the reverse running through the designer mark which I hadn't previously see- Tom- have you seen this one before?

Thanks,

Patrick

[Patrick W]

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[Patrick W]

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[panzer1432]

Looks to be Gold Brenlak

[teacher]

Repaint? Why does the back Nick of the needle have gold layer?

[Patrick W]

That cut mark was caused during manufacture of the pin- how would that get there from wear of the clasp?

[upbeek]

Interesting
I wonder what the timeline is for this die because it looks worn out?

Kind regards Chay

[Thomas Durante]

Hi guys,


Pat, interesting clasp, don't recall seeing that line die flaw on any other FLL CCC before. Almost looks like the die was cracked, but that is weird because we know this particular die lasted throught the war without this flaw as the last variants are of this type with fluted late-war pins and sheetmetal hinges, and with die flaw on obverse grenade handle, etc.


Finish looks OK to me, I like the gold color and wear seems appropriate. I don't know of any other FLL with nickel silver plating, usually it is brass/tombak. Unfortunately the backplate is a replacement and therefore we cannot be 100% sure about when the finish was applied on this example, but looks believable to me.


Tom

[Giel VW]

I would almost think I would see the crack/flaw on the obverse as well, it looks like it was broken, repaired and finished, but the crack doesn't come through.

This gold type of finish was also found on the mint pieces that were part of the big hoard found about 12 years ago. It's a very light, soft gold colour. These FLL's in gold were wrapped in their original paper and were put in the cardboard box.

[uk-ok]

It would be interesting to see the edge of that side with the flaw, to see how deep it penetrates.

Is it possible that it was bent and the other side didn’t crack ?

[Thomas Durante]

This gold type of finish was also found on the mint pieces that were part of the big hoard found about 12 years ago. It's a very light, soft gold colour. These FLL's in gold were wrapped in their original paper and were put in the cardboard box.

Hi Giel,

I disagree with this, I have handled several of these gold examples from the "hoard" and all had the typical gold brennlack finish applied directly to the zink base metal (i.e. no underlying coating). Several others I have on file also don't appear to have this type of underlying nickel silver coating.

I am not saying Patrick's example is refinished, only that it doesn't conform to the examples I have studied from the hoard nor have pics on from other collectors. If you have any pics of other clasps from the hoard showing this type of particular finish like Patrick's and don't mind sharing I would love to see them posted.

Thanks much.

Tom