The history of football badge makers is a little bit sketchy for one reason or another, this may be because football badges were probably seen as a bit of a sideline by many of the larger jewellery makers/metal-ware producers and as such didn’t have the same level of cataloguing as their other products.
What is certain though is that a fair few of the manufacturers originated from the Birmingham area, this was due to Birmingham developing as result of the Industrial Revolution into the centre of jewellery and metal-ware manufacturing.
The main football badge makers (or distributors in the case of Coffer) that we are aware of and those that you will invariably come across on your football badge collecting travels are Miller, Reeves, Fattonni, Gaunt, R.E.V.Gomm, Coffer and Firmin
There is also supposedly some football badges that were made by J.R Gaunt but we have never actually seen any, as far as we are aware they were very big in the military badge making area.
Of the above there are certain companies who are commonly associated with certain types of football badge, for example R.E.V Gomm produced a massive range of distinctive shaped badges that showed a ball with a teams name and nickname incorporated into the design, these are still very collectable to this day but have been massively copied and it is now nigh on impossible to identify an original unless you are an expert.
Reeves did also produce a fairly large range of football badges but were also big in the speedway (and possibly Butlins) badge arena as well, again, their designs have been massively copied but they did at least back stamp most of their designs so you can usually be sure its an original if you find one.
Miller were supposedly the main makers of the famous Golly badges but they did apparently contract out a lot of this design to other prominent badge makers of the era, again the details of this have been lost in the mists of time.
What we do know is that an absolutely massive range of Golly badges are now available in football team colours holding a scarf …. please don’t be taken in by sellers telling you these are rare, I know for a fact that these have been produced in their thousands over recent years !!
Another company that used to contract out their badges was Coffer who although one of the more “famous” football badge makers didn’t apparently actually make any !! Preferring instead to get other badge makers to make them and them back stamp them as their own, again though confirmation of this is seemingly impossible as the details are shrouded in mystery.
So there you are, there is no doubt that during your badge collecting searches you will come across some of the makers above, hopefully the info we have given you will give you some idea about whose who and help you in your collecting.