The subject of the study is an issue in the field of legal archaeology devoted to two city insignia of the Old Polish period – the sceptre of Cracow’s mayors and the mace of Lublin city authorities. The main research issue regarding the Cracow sceptre, due to the lack of known sources from the 16th-18th centuries, concerns the credibility of the tradition of its legal functions. There are the following parallels in favour of recognizing the truthfulness of the tradition of the historic Cracow’s insignia handed over to the city by the Polish rulers: the custom of the sceptres of the Jagiellonian University confirmed by historical sources since the 15th century, the fact of the possession of a sceptre by the city of Lviv, as well as the specifics of the source documentation that has been researched so far on the insignia of Cracow, namely the inventories of the municipal treasury from 1541, 1596 and 1679. The last aforementioned circumstance is indicated by more precise documentation of the city insignia kept in the 17th century in Lublin. The mace owned by Lublin in 1640 appears as a military insignia transferred to the municipal law in relation to the performance of military-administrative and judicial tasks by the city. The mace is first mentioned after the appointment of a new city guard in Lublin in 1620 in connection with the threat of a Turkish invasion. The feature distinguishing the mace from the sceptre was its lower symbolic meaning and narrower legal significance as an insignia intended for the time of emergency (a threat to the city). The circumstances indicated above contributed to the fact that the mace did not survive in the historical consciousness of Lublin as its former insignia.