Antique key or reproduction?

TexSteve

I recently purchased the key shown in the attached image at a garage sale. An elderly woman was having the sale and she lived in a home that was built in 1910. She didn’t know anything about the key other than she had found it laying at the rear of the top shelf in a closet after she purchased the house in 1970.

The key is just under 8.5″ in length and the bow is about 2.5″ wide. It appears to be brass and it weighs 6.5 ozs. It looks too “pretty” to be an authentic antique key as I don’t see much signs of wear. On the other hand, it does have a really good “aged” patina and it doesn’t have what I consider the typical signs of a reproduction; there’s no seams and no hard edges, etc. that are common with machine made items. When I use a magnifying loupe, I can see what appears to be wording or possibly ornate inscription at the top of the bit where it meets the shank but I just can’t get enough detail out of it to figure out what it might have said - if anything.

I’m not a collector (yet) but would appreciate any insight on what I purchased. I spent a whole dollar on this key and I’m hoping I didn’t throw good money away :-) !

Thanks,

Steve

Paul Prescott

Not antique and not reproduction either as it’s certainly not a ‘real’ key. By real I mean a key of this design, of this method of construction & material would never have operated a lock.

Billy B Edwards Jr. CML

oldlock wrote
Not antique and not reproduction either as it’s certainly not a ‘real’ key. By real I mean a key of this design, of this method of construction & material would never have operated a lock.

I agree, in fact by looking where the bow meets the shaft I think we can safely say it was made as a bottle opener.
BBE.

[unknown]

Dean Nickel

What you have there is a “Church key” or a bottle opener as Billy said. My grandfather had one in his shop to open his beer.

TexSteve

Thanks for the info! After we bought this, I noticed the small “flange” protruding into the bow and joked to my wife that if this old “key” isn’t worth anything, we can probably use it as a bottle opener. It never ocurred to me that someone would actually want something this large to use in opening bottles!

I appreciate your help in identifying my new super-sized bottle opener. Now if I could just find a bottle that actually required an opener …….

Take care,

Steve