 
Long before I knew their official name, I called these charms VARSITY
LETTERS. Later, I learned
that they were made in New York by Eppy Charms, Inc., which called them,
nonetheless, VARSITY LETTERS.
What else would you call them?
The charms in the first picture are examples of the original VARSITY
LETTERS. They are 29/32"
tall and 5/8" wide and slightly over 1/8" thick.
The colors in which I have examples are white, flesh tan, pink, red,
light blue, green, and yellow -- also there is a translucent
white. I have examples
of all the letter shapes in these except for "H," "K," "L," "P," "Q," "S,"
"V," and "Z." I have not
seen numbers in this style.
|
These charms are all plastic, but some of them have been covered in metal
by a process called vacuum plating. To the right are examples
of vacuum plated VARSITY LETTERS.
In the original, thicker, series of VARSITY LETTERS, I have examples
of all of the vacuum plated shapes but the letters "C," "F," "H," "K,"
"N," "Q," "W," and "Z." I have not seen numbers in this style. |
The letters in the picture at left are examples of the four different colors
I have in vacuum plated prizes -- bronze, copper, silver,
and gold. |
Some prizes, such as the "A," "K," and "O" charms in the picture at right,
have what appears to be metallic paint in copper, gold, and
silver. They were
made with a process Eppy called vacuum metalizing, which is actually
a very thin coating and usually cannot be peeled off like the metal from
the plated prizes sometimes can.
This process of vacuum metalizing is usually found with these thinner,
newer prizes. The "Y" in
this picture is an uncommon second generation (thinner) example of VARSITY
LETTERS which has been vacuum plated. |
|
VARSITY LETTERS come in two thicknesses.
The first generation prizes in the first picture on this page are
the original charms, which are thicker than the later ones.
The original VARSITY LETTERS appear to have been the base for the
metal plated prizes, because they have the same dimensions. |
The vacuum metalized prizes in the picture above are the same thickness
as these newer prizes, which are 3/32" thick. 
To the left are examples of translucent colors, of which I have translucent
white, translucent pink, tanslucent hot pink, translucent
green, translucent yellow/green, translucent orange,
and translucent goldenrod.
To the right are examples of the solid colors in the second generation
VARSITY LETTERS, the only set in which I have found numbers.
In this set I have the following solid colors : white, pink,
red, powder blue, light blue, navy blue (the
ones that look almost black), light green, forest green,
and yellow.
In the last picture, at right, there are a number of powder blue
letters that I purchased all at once.
I am missing only the following letters from having examples of all the
letter and number shapes in the second generation VARSITY LETTERS:
"Q," "X," "Z," and "3."
The letter "O" doubles as the number "0," so it is naturally one of the
most common shapes in this set. |
| It
might be interesting to note that there are three shapes that I have not
seen in any set of VARSITY LETTERS so far, those are "Q," "Z," and
"3." |
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