DEAD MAN'S PENNIES STILL TURNING UP

The British Government honored their war dead after World War I with a large uniface cast medallion given to family members with the name of their fallen relative worked into the design. This along with Britannia holding a wreath and trident with the British lion at her feet on the face of this 4 3/4-inch cast bronze memento.

Unfortunately, the medal has earned the ungracious name "Dead Man's Penny" in Britain over the years. I refused to call it that when I was in the medal business, instead calling it a "War Dead Memorial Medallion" as I sold perhaps a dozen or so of them.

They are not rare -- 908,371 service personnel, both men and women died in the Great War -- that many could have been issued. Now three or four generations later they are turning up in family possessions, often with the question, "Just what are these things?"

That happened last week in Walton-le-Dale, England where a lady there came by her grandfather's memorial medallion. Some family member years ago must have drilled a hole near the top to mount it on a wall. As a collectable, the hole drops the maybe $40 value in half, but it was family property, they could do what they wished.

This is not the last word. They will continue emerging long into the future.

To read the complete article, see: The coin that completes relative's heroic legacy (www.lep.co.uk/lifestyle/the_coin_that_completes_relative
_s_heroic_legacy_1_2943916)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: THE DEAD MAN'S PENNY (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v09n46a16.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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