Hi Ladies,
just to chime in about that sword pin w/the coat-of arms... oddly enough that pin is likely vintage and original, in spite of the cheap look/feel. Sword pins were featured in the Balfour (one of our jewelers, prior to our change to BPA and then the merge with MOD/Herff Jones) catalog in the 40's and 50's.
It's funny to look at the catalogs because Balfour clearly just made all kinds of jewelry and slapped a coat-of-arms on everything. (Seriously, pages and pages of stuff!) In Thetalady's case, I wonder if someone didn't over-polish it and take the plating right off the COA down to the base metal? Usually they didn't make them in bi-colored metal-the COA should match the rest of the item. I have one of these pins I picked up a few years ago, and it's quite nice, but mostly because it has a nice healthy layer of tarnish.
Cheers,
-K