A long-time cherished tradition here at Western Heritage Company is serially numbering buckles.  This started as a way to keep track of how many buckles were sold of specific designs.  Our founding buckle, the Forest Service Official buckle, is currently in the 70K numbers!  Most crew buckles hover around 100 or less.  Over the years, we've seen an influx of requests for personalized serial numbers,  call numbers, badge numbers, lucky numbers, etc.  This is totally fine with us, but it breaks the fundamental idea behind sequential numbering.   Starting this December 2025, we are going to branch out the two as different entities.  This is a hand-done part of the job, and trying to keep track of thousands of different numbered editions can easily open us up to human error as it is.  When we start jumping around outside of sequential numbering, the risk for error is even greater.  We are not in a position to transfer our buckle numbering system into any type of digital database.  This is still done the old school way, by hand.  Think card catalog at the library in pre-computer days.  For those under 30, yes, that was a thing!  Casting is a messy business, and electronics are banned from the shop.

 

THE OPTIONS:

A) You want a new belt buckle design and have no interest in serial numbering.  Yay, you're done here.  No action required.

 

B) You want serial numbering on your new buckle design.  You have no interest in custom engraving in the future.  There is a one-time $55 serial numbering set-up fee that needs to be paid.  We will only ever do sequential numbering on your buckles.  No special requests allowed.

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C)  You want serial numbering on your new buckle design, but you know that the guys want their special numbers on them.  NO set-up fee.  A custom numbering plate will be put on the back of your buckle, and a $15 fee for custom engraving will be added to each buckle.  If folks don't want to pay the $15, no problem, they just get a blank buckle.

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D) You want sequentially numbered buckles AND custom flexibility on your new belt buckle.  There are 2 $55 set-up fees for the custom backplates.  One that is the true Serial Number that will always be in numeric order.  And then a second custom plate that, IF someone wants, they can have a specialty engraved for $15 per buckle.

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CHARACTER LIMIT: 6 characters, upper case letters only, no special characters.

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SET-UP FEES MUST INCLUDE THE SERIAL NUMBERING OPTIONS.  We have to have the mold made with the right plate on the back, or we cannot put any engraving, numbering, or otherwise on the back if there is no smooth plate to engrave into.

 

Now you are probably wondering, what about the 50 years of buckles that already have some sort of serial numbering already in place?  We got you covered.  There are a select few designs that are already set up on our online store to show the custom addition of $15 for their specific requests.  Because they were set up prior to this new guideline, we are going to offer a grandfathered serial-numbered gift.  This means, if your buckle has the $15 add-on and you don't have the need for a special number or simply don't want to pay the extra charge, you will still get a buckle with the next open serial number if you opt out of the $15 charge.  NEW designs will get a blank custom plate, but if your buckle has a space that says "Ser.. NO." there will be something there.  

Prototype bukles will be marked with FP for foundry proof.

Requests for a number out of sequence have a $15 per buckle charge.  NOT ALL NUMBERS ARE GOING TO BE AVAILABLE.  EX: if you want #15, but the next open number for your buckle is 60, we will not renumber any number that has already been issued.  That compromises the point of having serially numbered items.  If you want #154 and the next number is 60, we can do that for you.  We will note that #154 has been used and skip over it when we get to that point in the sequential numbering.  This is a very manual process, and there is no way to fully guarantee that a duplicate number will not be done again.  It's the risk assumed when ordering specialty serial numbers.  

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Buckles cast in bronze and silver alloy share an edition. Sterling, Gold-Plated, and Silver-Plated EACH have their own edition.