Has any one ever seen one of these in real life?

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

What Jim Maxwell is wearing in the photo above appears to be a badge of office or perhaps an award for service to his clan society. The Clan Gunn awards those and I have a couple myself.

I think the idea that the chief gave his clansmen metal badges with his crest to wear to signify their allegiance is probably Victorian nonsense. The true badge of the clan was whatever plant badge they had adopted to wear in their bonnets. I have never seen an ancient metal badge purporting to be one of those mysterious insignias

There used to be several badges of this type on display in Warwick Castle, worn by the retainers of the Earls of Warwick in the 15th century. At one time there was also a retainer's badge of the Fitz-Gerald Earls of Kildare in the Heraldic Museum at Dublin Castle which was said to date from the 16th century.

In Scotland these badges weren't handed out to every clansman, but rather were given to specific individuals charged with carrying out specific tasks by their chief, and they were returned to the chief once that commission was carried out. In other words these badges represented the authority of a chief, as delegated to one of his "ain folk". It is generally agreed by Scottish armorists that with the passage of time these badges, which in all likelihood pre-dated the arrival of heraldry in the Highlands, eventually became adopted as crests; certainly this was the position taken by Innes of Learney and Gair of Gair and Nigg. With the advent of mass production, and the mid-ninteenth century "Highland revival", clan badges, as we now know them, became widely available to the buying public, replacing the older plant badge as a sign of belonging to a clan. There was, however, nothing "invented" about their shape as we find examples of crests within a strap and buckle engraved on all sorts of Scottish objects that pre-date the Highland revival by several hundred years.