Fantasy N&W RPO tag

[NW Mailing List]

 My dad was a RPO clerk and foreman on the NW for many years. I do not recall seeing any such brass tags. He had card stock tags that slid into a metal holder on the lip of the top of the canvas bags. 
He did have the official keys to USPO locks. There may have been a brass tag on that key chain/ring.  
The tags in the picture appear to be as you said in the message. 


    On Tuesday, January 19, 2021, 10:14:42 AM EST, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:  
 
 Hello, all:

It appears that there are several RPO/REA/Mail tags being marketed by a seller.  An example listing is https://www.ebay.com/itm/ANTIQUE-NORFOLK-WESTERN-R-1227-U-S-MAIL-RAILROAD-BRASS-BAG-TAG-RPO-J36/174602003138?hash=item28a71722c2:g:njUAAOSwSotgBiBR and others can be viewed by searching for other seller's items.

This is not a reproduction; these are fantasy items of which originals never existed.  My opinion is that the craze and high prices for brass baggage tags have spawned a garage-production line of sheet brass that has been hand-lettered with steel punches, then aged with acid or buried in the ground for a while to make them appear to be metal-detector finds.  If any of these sell, they are certainly a good return on time and materiel invested.

In the "for what it's worth" buyer-beware category,

Frank Scheer
f_scheer at yahoo.com
________________________________________
NW-Mailing-List at nwhs.org
To change your subscription go to
http://list.nwhs.org/mailman/options/nw-mailing-list
Browse the NW-Mailing-List archives at
http://list.nwhs.org/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/
  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist6.pair.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20210124/e33c5c72/attachment-0001.html>