A surprising & interesting find!

AdkMan60

New Member
Joined
Apr 12, 2021
Messages
9
Location
Chestertown, NY (Adirondack Mts.)
I'm a BAD (Born Again Detector-ist) just getting back into the hobby after being away some 25-30 years, now that I'm retired. While deciding to hunt the yard here where I have been renting the upstairs apartment since 2013, I came across a most interesting and highly unusual find. It was hitting about mid range on my Oshion MD-A1 detector. I dug down about 4"-5" and at first I thought I'd found a small length of junk pipe. I brushed my finger across the caked on soil and immediately I recognized the notches and that it was a heavy metal whistle!! More rubbing revealed the following engraved lettering on the side: B&R City Police & Fire Whistle. It's just over 3 1/4" in length and 5/8" at its widest width. It seems these were manufactured between 1910 and ended post WWII. They were either made of brass or a unknown silver colored metal. This one is not brass but has a nice patina. It was chocked full of soil. It cleaned up nicely and it's duplex or two tone "whistle" works just fine!! Here's the link I found to be very useful in it's history: https://www.thewhistlegallery.com/ Then click on Categories at the top of the page>Police>086 B&R Whistles. I've found someone on eBay who has the brass version listed for $75 or best offer.


Pictures forthcoming soon.
 

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Relic-wise, that has got to be just about the coolest find I've seen since I joined this forum!

Now you can bask in that and truly blow your own whistle!
 
Relic-wise, that has got to be just about the coolest find I've seen since I joined this forum!

Now you can bask in that and truly blow your own whistle!


:lol: Thanks!

I'm wondering what type of metal it's made of? These were either made from brass or something else that I have yet to read about in my research on them.
 
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I’ll second or third the cool find! I sometime like to imagine how stuff ended up where it did. Could weave a good story around a find like that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Thanks for the cool comments everyone. Since finding it, I've wondered how it ended up where I found it too 🤔 And I'm still wondering what metal it's made of.

Why do you think it’s not brass? Because it’s not shiny, gold-colored?

Most brass items that have been in the ground for a long time will discolor to the point where they look like your whistle’s color.

When I’m separating copper from brass scrap for the recycle process, I will use a flat file to cut thru the heavy oxidation to determine if it is copper or brass. I’d hesitate to to do that though, on a nice relic like your whistle.
 
yes, LEO type entities are sometimes fond of buying up their nostalgic past. So there is sometimes a collector market for such items. Nice find !
 
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