I have always thought this the most attractive of the Texas waist belt plates. It is also one of the very rarest and most desirable of the Confederate State plates. So rare are they that I have wanted to purchase one for more than 30 years and this is the first opportunity that I have had of doing so.

This is one of the few star buckle patterns that is positively identified as having Texas roots, and it is presented as such in Steve Mullinax’s, Confederate Belt Buckles and Plates, ExpandedEdition. It has been identified as such by the author based on "two of these lined-star plates have recently (circa 1998) been found in a Texas Brigade camp in Virginia and a contemporary photograph shows an identified Texas officer wearing this style” and noting that even though these were manufactured during the Texas Republic period, many of the Texans went to the Virginia Theatre wearing these.

This particular example was excavated on the coast of North Carolina. I was told that the upper star point was slightly damaged at the very tip when it was excavated, but I can see no trace of a repair, so it must have only been nicked.

To give the reader some idea of this plate’s scarcity, it is rated a 9 on the Mullinax Rarity Scale, which is defined as there being between 6 and 15 known to exist. There cannot be more than one or two out of these survivors that are complete and in such very good condition.

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