Antique Hat Pins
A long steel pin with a decorative head, made to hold a large hat firmly to the hair.
Antique Hat Pins
Hat pins came into general use to secure large hats to piled-up hair, and were made in quantity from the later 19th century until hat fashions changed after the First World War. The functional part is the long steel shank; the collectable part is the head on top of it.
Silver heads dominate, in 17 of 20 titles on Sellingantiques, and just over half of all listings name coloured glass. Amber and amethyst are the only colours that appear, sometimes combined in a single head. The likeliest piece you'll meet is a small silver-headed pin with an assay office and hallmark year quoted in the title.
Chester is the assay office of this category, named in nine titles, with Charles Horner attached to eight of them and hallmark years running 1907 to 1923. A smaller group carries Birmingham marks from other firms, and one pin was assayed on import in 1904. Agate and marcasite settings each appear once.
Away from the silver band sit a handful of one-offs: figural pins in the shape of a fox, a swallow and a pig, a garnet and diamond jockey cap pin brooch from around 1860, and a signed French hatpin of about 1912. The dealers' period labels are often rounded, so a pin marked 1934 may be filed under 1930; the hallmark year in the title is the firmer date.
What Sets Them Apart
Metal draws the widest line. Silver accounts for 17 of 20 listings and forms the body of the category, while the two highest-priced pieces are 18ct gold and the only other gold pin is 9ct. Within silver, the spread is narrower and turns on other things.
A named maker with a legible assay year lifts a silver pin. The titles at the top of the silver band pair a firm with a Chester date letter, and that pairing does as much work as the decoration does. Plain solid silver heads sit up there alongside glass-set and stone-set ones, so a coloured cabochon is not on its own the deciding factor.
Subject matters where it is unusual. Figural heads, the fox, the swallow, the pig, are singled out in their titles and sit above plainer pins of the same metal. Length is used as a selling point too, though only one title states a measurement, a nine-inch Art Nouveau silver pin with amethyst glass.
Antique Hat Pins Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for hat pins, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
Figural heads turn up rarely in the archive. A fox, a swallow and a pig account for three listings between them.
The Antique Hat Pins Glossary
- Hat pin
- A long pin with a decorative head, used to fix a hat to the hair.
- Assay office
- The office that tested and marked the silver. Chester and Birmingham are the two named across these listings, with Chester well ahead.
- Hallmark year
- The date letter in the marks, quoted in title after title as, for instance, Chester 1909. Hallmark years here run from 1904 to 1934.
- Import marks
- Marks applied to a piece assayed on import rather than made in Britain. One silver swallow pin carries them, dated 1904.
- Shank
- The long pin below the head, usually steel. It is the working part and rarely the reason anyone buys.
- Marcasite
- Faceted iron pyrites used as a small sparkling stone. It appears on one Birmingham 1934 pin.
Antique Hat Pins: Frequently Asked Questions
What are hat pin heads usually made of?
Silver, in 17 of 20 titles. That silver is British-assayed and the year is normally quoted alongside the office in the title.
Gold turns up three times: a 9ct pig and, at the top of the range, an 18ct garnet and diamond jockey cap pin brooch.
Which assay office appears most often?
Chester, named in nine of twenty titles. Birmingham makes a smaller showing, and a single pin carries import marks of 1904.
Chester dates in these titles run from 1907 to 1923. The Birmingham ones stretch as late as 1934.
Why is Charles Horner so common in the listings?
The name appears in eight titles, always paired with a Chester hallmark year, which makes it the single most frequent attribution in the category on Sellingantiques.
Those pins cover both plain solid silver heads and glass-set ones, and they sit at the upper end of the silver band.
What colours of glass turn up in the heads?
Amber and amethyst, and nothing else. Glass is named in eleven titles, just over half the category.
One pin combines both colours in a single head.
How old are antique hat pins?
The dated field runs 1860 to 1930, with the bulk Edwardian and 1910s. A single 1860s piece sits decades before everything else.
Dealers' period labels are often rounded against the hallmark quoted in the same title, so a Chester 1923 pin may be filed under 1910. The hallmark year is the tighter date.
Are figural hat pins often seen?
Not often. Three listings account for all of them: a silver fox, a silver swallow with import marks, and a 9ct gold pig.
Their titles flag the subject, and each sits above plainer pins in the same metal.