ST. LOUIS – Five finely crafted, gold-filled works of a world-class jeweler are ready to adorn the chests of new St. Louis Police Chief Daniel Isom and other top cops.

Price tag: $1,987 each – about 100 times the price of a patrolman’s badge.

That’s a bargain for the St. Louis police, who acknowledged last week that they had paid $5,900 apiece for two solid-gold badges for Isom’s predecessor, Joe Mokwa, when he became chief. (Mokwa accepted only one and Isom wears the other.)

The latest badges were a nearly $10,000 line item in a unanimous vote Wednesday by the Board of Police Commissioners to approve December purchases.

That was just hours before the department admitted that it had wrongly kept up to $6 million seized in the arrest of suspects.

Neither issue – the badges or the cache – came up for public discussion. Board approval of the badges was a formality because the department’s supply division already had made the no-bid purchase a month ago, according to department records.

At a press conference called Saturday morning after the Post-Dispatch disclosed the purchase on STLtoday.com, Isom called the badge expenditures “outrageous.” He said there would be no more such spending.

The badges were ready to be picked up Friday from the jeweler, Stange Co., of Maryland Heights, Mo.

Other departments spend far less on brass for their top brass.

St. Louis County Police Chief Jerry Lee’s badge cost $110. Kansas City Police Chief James Corwin’s cost $48.75.

“We get a lot of compliments on it,” Kansas City police spokesman Darin Snapp said. “No one has ever asked for an upgrade.”

Col. James F. Keathley may be superintendent of the Missouri State Highway Patrol but he is the king of thrift. The patrol’s uniforms do not include badges. Insignias bearing Keathley’s troop and badge numbers cost $3.15 per collar.

Mark Campbell is the police chief of the richest city of at least 1,000 residents in the United States. That’s Belvedere, in California’s Marin County, where the per capita income is $114,000.

His badge cost $200 – about 2 ½ times what his officers’ badges cost.

“My badge is more ornate,” he explained.

Stange is perhaps best-known for making insignias for clients ranging from Third World monarchs to a religious order in Jerusalem that traces its roots to the First Crusade.

The company says it was hired by the Crown Council of Ethiopia in 2000 to make the Order of Solomon, an 18-karat, gem-studded medal worn by just six people, including Queen Elizabeth II.

Stange’s relationship with the St. Louis police goes back 30 years. Dave said Stange used to make all of the St. Louis police badges. But the department more recently has bought standard-issue badges from the lowest bidder.

“I would assume that in other big cities you’re going find higher-level badges,” Dave said. He suggested calling Los Angeles.

It turns out that Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton wears a badge that costs $61, according to that department’s supplier.

Dave could not believe that.

“For $61, I’d hate to see what the quality is,” he said. “For a police chief’s badge?”

The police badges have been in the news before. In 1993, the department was criticized for buying a $2,100 chief’s badge.

At the press conference Saturday morning, Isom said the current purchase was “just one more practice of the department that I looked at and knew had to be changed.”

“There are historical practices in this department that are broken. The people of St. Louis are counting on me to fix them, and as I find them, I will.”