Well as I continue to research these cases, I found the following on a web site dedicated to the daguerreotype photo cases.

What are those hard plastic cases called?

A "Union Case" and is an example of an early thermoplastic technology, being produced from about 1855 to 1865. Some people call them gutta-percha cases but that is not a correct term, better being "thermoplastic case" or, as we use, a "Union Case". Littlefield, Parsons & Co. was one such case manufacturers. A mixture of shellac and wood fibers were pressed into a steel mold. And to think we thought "plastics" were new in the 1950s, look at the quality they achieved in the 1850s!

FWIW, as I said in an earlier post, gutta percha is made from tree sap and the cases sold by Littlefield, Parsons were actually shellac based.

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James Redfield
LM #497