Need help with another identification - anyone know what this is?

[sin-n-dex]

Found another one - last one though (for a while)... anyone know what this is? The B&M shop owner thinks these are some type of weights, used in an apothecary or something like that.

[wastingtime101]

I swear I've seen those exact pics before and wondered why the items were upside-down. Did you ask about these before @sin-n-dex or am I losing my mind? (If you did ask before I assume there was no definitive identification, hence the new post.)

[sin-n-dex]

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@lacemaker3 wrote:

They seem to be slightly different sizes, is that right? They're all pretty close in size, so it's hard to tell.

Are they the same thickness, or do they vary? If they are different, does the thickness correlate to the numbers? I'm wondering if they might be thickness gauges, maybe.

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I just answered (but not in order, Katzrul15 paged me), they are between 5 and 6 grams, the number doesn't seem to relate to the weight (for instance the one with a 2 is heavier than the one with a 10, and there are a couple with the same number, but different weights).

The putting theory makes sense, these things are only 1" long and not very wide or deep... it would make sense to use something like this on the putting green to avoid colliding with another player's ball. And it makes sense the number relates to the player. I might go with that as my description. My buyers generally contact me when something is not identified correctly. With 10K in listings, mistakes happen.

C.

[sin-n-dex]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

I swear I've seen those exact pics before and wondered why the items were upside-down. Did you ask about these before @sin-n-dex or am I losing my mind? (If you did ask before I assume there was no definitive identification, hence the new post.)

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No, I only have the one set of pics. I guess I didn't pay attention to how I oriented them in the photo. It's entirely possible I posted about these before, but there was no resolution. I obtained these things probably 1.5-2 years ago, so I might have asked then. The photo has been sitting in my "problem" folder of images of things I can't list (can't identify, photos aren't good or set of pictures is incomplete, like I forgot the back of the postcard), since I did the Pontiac emblem and got that resolved in 2 minutes, I felt I was on a roll and should try with the "weights".

C.

[snidley7 · Accepted solution]

They look like pointers used to mark locations on a map or chart.

here are some similar ones

https://www.etsy.com/listing/924077310/a-set-of-eight-antique-brass-naval-chart

[wastingtime101]

Excellent @snidley7. I believe you have your answer @sin-n-dex - and the 2 that appear thicker are likely from a separate set.

[chapeau-noir]

Ahhh!  @snidley7  has it!

Here's a plain vanilla version.

Ever VectorStock has a plain version of it.

[moondogblues]

Ah, the mystery is solved...cool beans.

[candd205]

Ahhh, so since this was from a naval college, those markers could represent locations of ships on the map, with the point of the ship indicating the direction the ship is travelling. 

[lacemaker3]

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@snidley7 wrote:

They look like pointers used to mark locations on a map or chart.

here are some similar ones

https://www.etsy.com/listing/924077310/a-set-of-eight-antique-brass-naval-chart

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Aaah, yes! And that explains the criss-cross, rune-like markings. They would be used to line up the marker with lines on the map underneath, to get the marker in just the right place.

[lacemaker3]

Not a very clear picture, but this shows map markers in use on a map. A painting, I think, in the collection of the Imperial War Rooms Museum in London (Winston Churchill's war rooms).

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/21610

[maxine*j]

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@snidley7 wrote:

They look like pointers used to mark locations on a map or chart.

here are some similar ones

https://www.etsy.com/listing/924077310/a-set-of-eight-antique-brass-naval-chart

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Wow!  Good find.  And fascinating.  I wonder where that seller got the information about them?  Because in all of Internet Land, after some pretty thorough searching by text and by image, that is the only thing that comes up so identified. 

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[lacemaker3]

Possibly, the seller knew the provenance and history of the item, since they believe that they came from an English Naval College. It makes sense that these would be used from tracking the location of ships in pre-internet naval campaigns; you wouldn't want to use map pins if you needed to move them around frequently, it would damage the paper maps, which were probably quite expensive.

I suspect that these are hard to find on the internet, because the search engines return so many digital map markers, that the vintage ones don't make it anywhere near the top of the list.

[sin-n-dex]

Thank you everyone!

It's too bad I don't have a whole set... but I've got two partial sets, and there aren't many for sale (from what I saw after this item was identified). In case anyone wants to know... the shop paid a dollar for them. They fell under the category of "I don't know what this is" so they just gave it to me. I was offered half the sale price if I could identify them and sell them. (Listing will go up this week, but not today).

C.