Today’s guest blogger is Kevin Mackey, a collector and regular contributor to Show & Tell, who also contributed to our watch fob overview.

Twenty-five or so years ago, my wife and I were at her parents’ for Christmas. In their 1900-era house, there were only two rooms with heat, and 10 adults and two babies with nothing to do. At the time, I worked for a metal detecting company and had two metal detectors with me.

It was cold and a slight mist outside, but anything was better than dying of boredom as a sardine, so I got up and started putting on my coat. That aroused the rest of the bored crowd, and they wanted to know what I was going to do. I told them I was going to metal detect in the yard. They told me there was no sense in that, as only poor people had lived in that house. I told them we would see.

Within a couple of hours, I had what I considered 10 good finds including some jewelry and a 14-karat gold thimble from around 1898 (I later identified it through an 1898 Sears catalog). Another was a round medallion with a slot on one edge, and it was bent into a right angle. The medallion had a hand holding a large plow blade, and read “J.I. Case Plow Works, Racine, Wis.”

The group gathered at the kitchen table to see what I had found and then as I was showing them the jewelry I found, they remembered the first owner of the house was a doctor. A couple of distant cousins dropped in, including a man who had recently returned from Alaska from mining gold, where a flood wiped out his operation. He said he didn’t know what the medallion was, but he was sure it was supposed to be flat. He wanted to know if I wanted him to try to straighten it, and I told him to go ahead.

Later on, I went to a flea market and set up to try to sell the metal detectors. However, it seemed everyone was thrilled with my finds, but not so interested in buying a metal detector. When I returned from taking a break, my wife said a man had come by, wanting to know if I would sell the J.I. Case advertising medallion.

She gave me directions to his booth, so I went to find him. He told me that it was an advertising “watch fob,” which he collected. He said they hung from the other end of leather strap attached to the bail of a pocket watch, and they were designed to aid in getting the watch out of a watch pocket on your pants. He told me that he could tell that I didn’t want to sell it, but if I ever did, not to sell it for less than $100, as it was a very good one.

That was my first watch fob. I met this man every month at the flea market and talked fobs, as my collection grew. He suggested I set a number for a maximum number to have, and when I reached that number I should begin high-grading to stay around that number, selling off duplicates and ones of lesser interest. I reached my goal of 100 many years ago, but have only been able to stay below the 200 mark.