This pair of cufflinks is made from Pepsin gum celluloid pinbacks given away as premiums at the turn of the Twentieth Century. The first pin depicts the USS Chicago, a 4,500-ton protected cruiser commissioned in 1889. She served in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and later as a training vessel prior the Great War. During the war, the Chicago was the flagship of the Atlantic Submarine Force. She was renamed Alton in 1928 and eventually sank while being towed from Hawaii to California. The second pin depicts the USS Atlanta, also a protected cruiser (4,300 tons) and a sister ship to the Chicago. (See this photo of the Atlanta firing her guns.) She was scrapped in 1912. We have mounted these pins in silver bezel cups soldered to silver, rotating T-posts.