At glance, the design on this vintage Michigan fob/pendant seems too out of ordinary. On its face you’ve got a thick maize Block M, flanked by blue enamel sitting above the U-M seal:
But upon closer inspection, the date on the deal is 1837, not 1817, and therefore the pendant pre-dates 1929. The surprise here, to me, is that is a fairly modern-looking maize block ‘M’ style for such a vintage piece. Back then, while there was certainly a great deal of variation, the block Ms in circulation was much thinner than today’s style:
Now to be fair, you probably can tell that’s not the modern block M—the cleft in the middle drops to the bottom unlike the official design which cuts off halfway, but…it’s pretty close. You’d also be hard-pressed to find Michigan merch today set on stainless steel outside of the occasional collectible spoon.
The only sensible conclusion is that this was created by the Michigan time traveling hipster:
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