| Elsinore |
02-07-2015 06:05 PM |
This is a crazy old thread, but I had some things that might add to it. I was initiated in the early 90s, and at that time the hands were raised on the pin. I want to say they'd been raised for a few years at that point; pretty sure everyone in my chapter then had raised hands. The seniors at the time were the last official "pledges" while the rest of us came in as Alphas. I actually like the look of the raised hands over the flat ones, because the engraving for the flat hands is so variable and they don't always look much like hands. But I'm somewhat surprised they haven't moved to cut costs by enamelling them on flat like the current Phi Mu pin is. Seems like the extra gold for the raised hands and the variability lately in getting them on straight would make a case for it. I think it could look nice, depending on the design. I wish they'd drill the stars again, though; those always looked sharp!
We did have an option between regular and stickpin chapter guards, though I don't remember anyone in our chapter at the time ordering the stickpin version. I've seen references to the stickpin being a new option, which kind of confused me since I remember this being available 20 years ago. I went back to my chapter this year to help with recruitment, and I noticed a lot of stickpin guards. They look very pretty, and I wonder about the pros and cons between the two styles. I'd like to get a white gold or sterling guard to go with a white gold pin I rescued; anyone have any thoughts on the stickpin vs traditional guard pin?
I do not remember having white gold as an option in the 90s (certainly silver wasn't at that time). It was actually interesting to us that our Housemom (herself an ADPi, initiated in the 50s) had a white gold pin since we hadn't seen that. It obviously also had flat hands and cut stars, so different from our raised hands and flat stars. I know white gold was available at some point in the 70s, maybe 80s, then again sometime in the 2000s. But it wasn't available in the 90s as far as I remember.
In college I had a plain pin (no pearls at all; the rope border badge with 4 pearl points was the "step up" pin at the time), and I had a plain chapter guard that could hold about two threads from whatever shirt or dress I was wearing it on :rolleyes:. The plain pin is so tiny that it only has my initials on the back (diagonal across the back, no less), with no chapter designation or initiate date. I'd always wanted something nicer, though, so around 1999 or 2000, after grad school was finished and I was gainfully employed, I decided to get the pin I'd always wanted: alternating pearls and sapphires (my birthstone). The jeweller at the time was Burr, Patterson, and Auld, and no where on the pamphlet was there anything about the stones being synthetic, and I'd known the ones in my college days were real, so I never gave it a second thought about the quality of the gemstones. When I received my pin, there were some manufacturing flaws on the face of the pin, and the sapphires, while beautiful, looked obviously synthetic (extremely bright and too fiery for a real sapphire). I emailed them asking if the stones were genuine or lab created, and they wrote back that all their colored stones were synthetic. I wrote back calling them out on the fact that their brochure said nothing about the stones being anything other than genuine, and they initially brushed me off. However, I printed up the applicable statutes from the Federal Trade Commission regarding labelling of synethetic/lab created gemstones and sent them off to BPA with a carbon copy to EO, and I asked BPA to repair the defects on my pin and replace the lab created sapphires with the real ones I'd paid for. They did comply, and the pin I got back is gorgeous. It may be the last genuine sapphire ADPi pin created, because after that, the brochures were changed to state that all colored gemstones are synthetic. I know that synthetic stones are still pretty, and I know that the cost of real stones would just be prohibitive for most collegians, but I wish genuine colored stones were still an option.
As an aside, when I got the sapphire/pearl pin after grad school, I ended up choosing my married initials for the back of the pin instead of my maiden name initials. That pin was big enough to have those initials as well as my chapter and initiation date on the back. Someone looking at the back of that pin might be confused if they look me up in member search, since they won't find an initiate from that year and chapter with those initials!
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