Vintage and Antique Police Collectibles

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Pop culture is crawling with cops, from the bumbling Keystone crew and hapless Inspector Clouseau to the grim-faced detectives who populated “Hill Street Blues” and “The Wire.” In a few cases, the fictional artifacts of police work are also...
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Pop culture is crawling with cops, from the bumbling Keystone crew and hapless Inspector Clouseau to the grim-faced detectives who populated “Hill Street Blues” and “The Wire.” In a few cases, the fictional artifacts of police work are also famous, as in the TARDIS time machine from the “Dr. Who” television series, which hides in plain sight by disguising itself as a U.K. police box. Of course, most former police officers, their families, and advocates of law enforcement don’t collect police boxes to show their support for the men and women in blue, but they have been known to accumulate actual examples of policing such as vintage handcuffs, batons, and badges. Handcuffs have been around since at least the ancient Greeks, who forged shackles of iron to bind the hands of prisoners and slaves. By the 19th century, hinged handcuffs were common in England, but the arms of the cuffs required a screw key to be locked, which was next to impossible when a prisoner was struggling to get free. That’s why the ratcheted handcuff designed by W. V. Adams in 1862 was such a breakthrough—it allowed a culprit to be cuffed securely without having to fumble with a key. This basic design was subsequently tweaked by manufacturers such as Bean, Peerless, Smith & Wesson, and Tower, whose cuffs were used by U.S. police forces until the middle of the 20th century. Batons, billy clubs, truncheons, nightsticks, and espantoons (as they are uniquely called in Baltimore) have also been essential tools of the law-and-order trade. While many of these wooden sticks were used to subdue suspects during apprehension, batons that find themselves in police-memorabilia collections are often those that were made as presentation or parade items. Some of these ceremonial nightsticks are engraved with an officer’s name and rank, others are decorated with carved finials and dangling tassels. But whether they were used on the beat or for show, batons all share the characteristic of having one blunt...
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