In the past few months I have been buying parts of collections of collectors that stopped collecting or unfortunately passed away. ​This has enabled me to obtain badges that I knew existed, but had never seen for sale.

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This badge is one of those, it's from before 1967 as it was in that year that Berchem Sport abandoned their French name "Royal" Berchem Sport and changed it to the Dutch version of "Koninklijke" Berchem Sport. Despite of the fact that Antwerp is in Flanders where French is not even an official language (only Dutch is) many clubs in Flanders had French names until the 1960s and sometimes early 1970s as French was the language used by the upper class while the people have always spoken Dutch. From that moment on the popular pressure forced the changes.

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Also interesting is the central red and white crest which is the symbol of the old town of Berchem that didn't become a part of the city of Antwerp until 1983. This crest has also disappeared form the club's badge in our days. Berchem had 45.000 inhabitants at the moment of the merger with Antwerp and Berchem Sport played regularly in the top division until 1987.