A Slide on the Ice

 

QUESTION: My father has been involved in curling since he was a teenager. Being of Scottish background, curling seems to be in his blood. Over time, he’s amassed quite a collection of curling memorabilia. And while I’m not as interested in participating in curling, I do love the idea of collecting its memorabilia. With all the recent attention that curling got from the recent Winter Olympics, how has the value of memorabilia been affected?

ANSWER: The key to smart collecting is discovering today’s sports-related souvenirs that could become tomorrow’s hot collectible. Spotting trends is the key, especially when a sport skyrockets to international acclaim as just happened with curling at the Milan/Cortina Winter Olympics. 

While most Americans aren’t familiar with curling, the widespread coverage of the sport at the recent games brought it to the forefront, along with the memorabilia that goes with it. Its colorful buttons, stylish pins and embroidered badges often appear at sports shows, flea markets and in online auctions.

Curling developed in 16th-century Scotland where it was played outdoors on frozen ponds or lochs. Simple equipment for the game included natural curling stones and primitive brooms. When slid across the ice by a player, the stone would quite often curve, or curl, as it traveled toward its target, a large bull’s eye. Players used brooms to brush snow and particles from the path of oncoming stones.

The first recorded evidence of the sport came from John McQuhin, a notary from Paisley, Scotland.  A challenge between a monk and a representative of the local Abbot took place on a frozen lake regarding throwing stones across its surface. Eventually, the first curling clubs formed. Curling spread across North America and Europe with Scottish immigrants.  In 1838, the Grand Caledonian Curling Club codified the first universal rules of curling.  Four years later, members demonstrated the game for Queen Victoria. She loved the game and allowed the club to use "Royal" in its official name, changing it to the Royal Caledonian Curling Club.

When Scottish immigrants came to America, they brought the sport of curling with them. It soon spread across Canada and the northern part of the United States. By the mid-19th century, curling clubs prospered in the states surrounding the Great Lakes and in New York City. The Victorians popularized the sport, and its popularity has grown even more today. 

The first official international competition for the sport occurred during the first Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France in 1924.  In 1932, the Olympic Committee downgraded curling to a demonstration sport.  On April 1, 1966, the formation of the International Curling Federation helped to further legitimize the game to once again gain an Olympic spot. Nearly 30 years later, on July 21, 1992, the International Olympic Committee finally gave full medal status to both men and women's curling. 

During the curling season which runs from October to March, it’s estimated that several million people play the game worldwide. In Canada, curling is the second most popular sport next to ice hockey. In the United States, it’s played in 25 states.

Although the game has undergone modernization with uniform equipment, sleek uniforms, and modern facilities with refrigerated ice, the traditions of good will and fair play continue. Curlers play to win but never to humble their opponents. A true curler would rather lose than win unfairly.

The spirit of camaraderie is what attracts many players to curling. At the close of tournaments, known as bonspiels, curlers often exchange their club buttons, embroidered badges, or pins for coveted like pieces from opposing team members. Each club’s piece is unique in size, shape, color and design.

In fact, many curlers also collect the sport’s hats, sweaters, and ephemera-related items. Each button, badge, or pin elicits lasting memories.

So what is this sport all about? Two teams of four players make up the game. The players are respectively lead, second, third and skip. Each player slides round stones across the ice. The stones are concave on the bottom and have a handle on the top. They are slid toward a fixed mark in the center of a circle, called a house. The circle is marked with concentric bands. The object of the game is to slide the heavy granite stones closest to the center. 

Each player delivers two stones alternately with his opponent, beginning with the lead of each team and ending with the skip, who is also the team captain. One point is awarded for each stone that comes to rest nearer the tee than does any rival stone. A team can score up to 8 points with the 16 stones delivered in an end, or inning, unless no stone is in the house or the nearest opposing stones are equidistant, in which case there’s no score. Important strategies of the sport include blocking and knocking out an opponent's stones.

A distinctive part of curling is the use of a corn broom, or brush, by the partners of the deliverer to sweep the ice in the path of the oncoming stone. This is a tradition carried over from the days when people played curling on frozen lakes. It was necessary to clear the snow to provide a path for the oncoming stone. Curlers still sweep today to remove stray ice particles and smooth the surface of the ice, thus assuring the stone a longer ride. 

Prior to the 1950s, most curling brooms were similar to household brooms. In 1958, Fern Marchessault of Montreal inverted the corn straw in the center of the broom. This style of corn broom was referred to as the Blackjack. Today, brushes have replaced traditional corn brooms at every level of curling.

A curler also uses a brush for balance during delivery of the stone and by the skip to indicate where the curler should aim. The ice is meticulously groomed to keep it completely level. Prior to a competition, a member of the ice maintenance crew sprays a mist of water on to the ice to create a pebbled surface that helps guide the stones. Each stone weighs an average of 40 pounds and cannot exceed 44 pounds. Its circumference cannot be more than 36 inches. The minimum height is 4½  inches.

Pins for curling events in different Olympics have saturated the collectibles market and are easy to find. However, curling pins aren’t limited to the Olympics.  Pins from other curling competitions are also popular with players and collectors.  Because of the sport's popularity in Europe, European and specifically Scottish pins are some of the most common. Canadian curling pins are also fairly easy to find.

Popular curling collectibles also include personalized curling ornaments and novelty items like curling stone keychains and coasters. Additionally, collectors value unique memorabilia such as custom curling signs and miniature curling stones.

Antique curling stones are another popular item. The oldest stones hail from Scotland.  These can be more difficult to identify as curling stones often have no trademark or logo. An antique curling stone can cost as much as a new one.

The value of curling collectibles can vary widely based on rarity, condition, and demand. Values have increased significantly in the last 25 years. Items like vintage pins and memorabilia from significant events can fetch from $10 to $30 each while unique curling stones can sell for $50 to $150 for vintage ones to $200 to $700 for those from the late 19th to early 20th centuries. A new 2026 Milan Winter Olympics Curling Pin is selling for $10 to $20.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 50,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Colonial America" in the 2026 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

In Memory of Comrades in Arms

QUESTION: Recently, I purchased an interesting medal and ribbon at an antique show that the dealer  told me was from the late 19th century. The medal, made of what seems to be white metal, hangs from a fairly well worn red, white, and blue silk ribbon and says G.A.R. 24th Encampment,  Boston, Massachusetts, 1890. Can you tell me anything about this? What was the G.A.R.?

ANSWER: You have a Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) Badge from one of the organization’s annual conventions, known as encampments. These encampments took place in different cities beginning in 1866 and ending in 1949. The First National Encampment convened in Indianapolis, Indiana, on November 20, 1866 while the last or 83rd National Encampment took place in Indianapolis, Indiana on August 28, 1949. Sixteen members attended.

Dr. B.F. Stephenson founded the GAR in 1866 in Decatur, Illinois, to advocate and care for Union Civil War veterans, widows and orphans. Brothers, fathers and sons had marched off from towns and cities in July 1861, proud, excited, and dedicated—most without a clue as to what they were getting themselves into. Over one million of them died—more than in all the other wars the U.S. engaged in up to that time. And those who did return were often maimed for life.

The GAR was a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Union Army, US Navy, Marines and Revenue Cutter Service who served in the Civil War. Linking men through their experience of the war, the GAR became one of the first organized advocacy groups in American politics, supporting voting rights for black veterans, lobbying the US Congress to establish veterans' pensions, and supporting Republican political candidates. It dissolved in 1956 when its last member died.

Veterans had developed a unique bond during the Civil War that they wished to maintain, a trusting companionship and a sentimental connection they kept by joining veterans' organizations. At the end of the Civil War the individual was inconsequential, and the U.S. Congress needed some prodding to enact legislation to take care of veterans. These veterans' groups were instrumental in getting appropriate legislation passed.

Though many veterans groups organized after the Civil War, the GAR became the most powerful. By 1890, it had 490,000 active members. Five U.S. presidents came from its ranks as well as many senators and representatives. At one time, no doubt due to the political pressure of GAR constituents, one-fifth of the national budget went to soldiers pensions. The GAR founded soldiers' homes for the permanently disabled and was active in relief work.

According to chroniclers of the 24th National Encampment in Boston, in 1890—from which this badge originated—the GAR had, by then, established orphans homes in seven states, preserved Gettysburg as a national battleground and given more than $2 million in charity to veterans and their families whether or not they were members of the GAR. For a time, it was impossible to be nominated on the Republican ticket without the endorsement of the GAR.

Civil War veterans controlled a lot in this country and had a strong political voice. Among other things, they used their political influence to see that Congress adopted May 30 as Memorial Day.

To honor the deceased, veterans would decorate graves of their fallen comrades with flowers, flags and wreaths, so people referred to it as Decoration Day. Although Memorial Day became its official title in the 1880s, the holiday didn’t legally become Memorial Day until 1967. In 1977, Congress moved Memorial Day to the last Monday of May to conform with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. In December 2000, Congress passed a law requiring Americans to pause at 3 P.M. local time on Memorial Day to remember and honor the fallen.

The tradition of having picnics on Memorial Day actually began on May 1, 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina. The Confederates had used the horseracing course there as a Union prisoner-of-war prison. When the war ended and the Confederates evacuated the grounds, a large group of former slaves re-interred the Union soldiers’ bodies who had died there and erected a white fence with a large arched gate, above which they mounted a sign, “Martyrs of the Racecourse.” When they finished, they broke up and moved to the infield to hold picnics. And thus began this national tradition.



Delegate badges from the GAR’s National Encampments have long been a collectible. First created after the 1883 encampment in Denver, Colorado, and handed out annually until the last Encampment in 1949 in Indianapolis—except in 1884 when there wasn’t any badge—these “ribbons of honor” were created and furnished by the city that hosted the event. They reflected the city itself, including local history and state symbols as well as an image of the current Commander-in-chief.

Badges came in several varieties. There were the official ones, commissioned by the host city and given to all delegates, past delegates and members of allied organizations, such as the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, the Women's Relief Corps and the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic, as well as later, the Daughters of Union Veterans, and there were the semiofficial staff badges and souvenir badges. There were also testimonial badges, given to past Post officers at the end of their service period. These had horizontal rank straps with one or more stars on them and were often made of 14 or 18K gold and studded with diamonds.

In addition to the National Encampment badges, there were two-sided Post badges, with one side red, white and blue and the other in black with the words "In Memoriam," to be used when a member died. There were other unique Post badges as well, including those with a detachable metal top piece from which hung a large metal star or disk. And since Posts ordered new ones every few years, there are many variations in badges from each Post. Veterans wore Post badges to funerals, Memorial Day programs, and Fourth of July parades, among other events.

Some collectors specialize just in Department or state badges. Each state incorporated its flower, animal, or symbol into its badge design. So the Massachusetts badge featured a pot of beans, New Hampshire had a piece of granite on it, and Ohio badges had a picture of a buckeye. Each Department also had special delegate badges arid ribbons. The colors of ribbons, usually made from silk, varied, also. Department badges had red ribbons, Post badges had blue ribbons; and National badges always had a yellow/buff ribbon.

The Stevens Company of England produced the finest GAR ribbon badges, often referred to as Stevensgraphs. These portrait silks have extremely fine detail. Other companies, such as the B.B. Tilt Co.,. the United States Badge Co. and the Son of Paterson (N.J.) all made badges, but these aren’t as easily identified or as finely made.