Captain Video "Secret Seal" Ring (1951)

Captain Video and His Video Rangers was an American science fiction television series broadcast on the DuMont Television Network, and was the first series of its kind on American television. It aired between June 27, 1949 and April 1, 1955.

Set in the distant future, the series followed the adventures of a group of fighters for truth and justice, the Video Rangers, led by Captain Video. The Rangers operated from a secret base on a mountain top. Their uniforms resembled US Army surplus with lightning bolts sewn on.

The Captain had a teenage companion who was known only as the Video Ranger. Captain Video received his orders from the Commissioner of Public Safety, whose responsibilities took in the entire solar system as well as human colonies on planets around other stars. Captain Video was the first adventure hero explicitly designed (by DuMont's idea-man Larry Menkin) for early live television. "I TOBOR" the robot was an important, semi-regular character on the program, and represents the first appearance of a robot in live televised science fiction; the character's name was actually supposed to be "ROBOT I", but the stencil with its name was applied to its costume backwards.

This photograph shows Al Hodge (left), who played
the Captain, and Don Hastings (right),
as his Video Ranger.

The ring's top edge is in copper luster and has a tiny rocketship and four stars. At the center is brass plate with embossed initials "CV." The edge of this piece holds a tiny brass stem that joins it to the ring base. A piece of paper can be slipped between the elements and then the hinged cover is pressed down thus pressing the seal into the paper. Because the brass stem holding the top piece was so thin and fixed into position, most kids quickly broke off this covering and most examples of the ring, while they may look complete, are in fact without this upper slightly movable piece. A 2008 Hake's listing for a similar ring indicates that they had only seen six rings with the stem intact. The rings are numbered inside and this one is "69217" and is the scarcer version with copper top and gold base.

[Text based on Wikipedia and Hake's]