So your dad handed down his memerobilia from his time in the army. Among boxes of old uniforms and the like, you find a couple of pins from his time in Vietnam. You would feel bad wearing them, and you don’t really have any place to display them. What to do?

Old American military pins don’t tend to be worth very much unless they are from WWII or before. Because gear like pins tend to be mass procuced, only those that are quite special have much monetary worth. Some old pins however, especially authentic pieces from the Civil War, can fetch quite a price.

But that’s not really the whole story. There’s a lot that goes into determining how much antiques are worth.

Pins Are Common

This isn’t true of all pins in the military, but most insignia pins in particular are incredibly common. Since the civil war, soldiers have been given lapel pins to wear to signify the division of the military that they belong to.

Back then, the pins given depended on the particular unit that the wearer belonged to. These units could be so big that it was impossible to tell them apart any other way, since uniforms were otherwise standardized.

This tradition continues to this day through the insignia pins which are given to pretty much all soldiers and sometimes even their families down to this very day. Because of this, you can understand how the market could have ended up somewhat flooded with these pins.

Even as far back as WWII this kind of pin might not be worth very much, simply because there are so many of them in the world.

Even pins created for special occasions might be worth even less than an enamel pin with a Pokemon on it if the event was recent enough. I wouldn’t expect most pins to be worth more than five or six dollars at the most.

Ceremonial Pins

Pinning ceremonies are a big part of military culture. They are a way of showing respect for people who have worked hard or shown particular bravery. Because these pins are much less common than others, they can be a little bit more valuable especially if they’re older.

However, we aren’t talking huge money here. We’re talking thirty to fifty dollars if they’re in good condition. And even if you could sell them, these pins often have much more sentimental value.

Some of these pins can be completely unique to the person who won them. In this case it can be difficult to estimate their value. I would imagine that these kinds of pins might not have much worth to people other than themselves and their own family.

Rare Pins

There are other pins, however, that are specific enough in scope to be valuable but broad enough that general collectors might want them. For instance, WWII era pins that were worn in Army HQ can sometimes be worth nearly a hundred dollars, and a set of sterling silver pins from the same era could be worth even more than that.

These pins are valuable because they are difficult to obtain. However, it can be quite difficult to tell which pins in particular will be rare enough to earn you money. Contacting a collector with knowledge of th time period the pin is related to might be a good idea, but you also probably shouldn’t get your hopes up. Even rare pins might not be worth much if they don’t have high demand.

Civil War Pins

Now we get to the things that might be worth money. The American Civil War was around two hundred years ago, and while a lot of memorabilia from the time is worth absolutely nothing (you can buy seventeen civil war era bullets on eBay for only ninety nine cents,) the pins wore by combatants on both sides have become sought after collectors items.

Union pins are worth money in their own right, but a huge number of confederate pins have been lost to time making them the more valuable of the two. However, don’t put that pin you found in your attic up on eBay quite yet.

The same molds that were used to cast these pins during the Civil War remained active for years afterwards continuing to produce pins to a willing pin buying populous, and that means that the vast majority of confederate pins are inauthentic copies. Given, they are inauthentic copies that look exactly like the real thing, but they are still copies and it can be incredibly difficult for collectors to tell them apart from the real thing.

This means that unless your pin was either handed down to you with a meticulously well kept record of its history or recently dug up out of the ground it probably isn’t really worth anything.

Other Old Pins

When it comes to other pins than these, the most valuable ones are generally going to be from the pre-WWI era. There are two reasons for this: many of these have been lost over time, and the American military was much smaller before WWI.

Collectors items live in a place of supply and demand. The more of them there are, the less they are worth. Think beanie babies. There are tons and tons of beanie babies in the world, and even though each production run was limited to a certain amount of time, the vast majority of beanie babies were over produced to the point where they are now worth very little.

Pre-WWI pins are kind of like original run beanie babies. There weren’t nearly as many of them as the later printings, and so they are much more valueble. A lot of them have also been eaten by their owner’s dogs, meaning that the ones that are left are all worth way more money than they would have been otherwise.

So if great grandpa’s lapel pins have started to grow a bit of a patina, it’s a good sign that he left you something worth a couple hundred dollars. Otherwise, the best way to make money off of your collection is probably to wait just a couple of generations.