THE ONLY SURVIVING GOBRECHT DIE

This all started at the Whitman Baltimore show in March, 2006. At that show, I purchased an example of the award medal commissioned by the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association. This is a well known 19th century award medal, engraved by Christian Gobrecht in 1837. Somewhere in my disorganized office is a receipt from Tony Terranova indicating the pur-chase price was $350.

Shortly thereafter, I wrote a piece for the E-Gobrecht (Volume 2, Issue 4) noting that this particular medal was awarded to Enoch Robinson for exhibiting “AN IMPROVED DOOR / SPRINGS AND KNOBS” at the 1841 Association fair. At this point the power of the Internet kicked in and a gentleman from New York City, connected with a successor firm of Robinson, contacted me about purchasing the medal. I gathered that he actively purchased company memorabilia, searching on the Internet for whatever could be found.

Since I had a trip scheduled to New York anyway, I agreed to meet him in person at his place of business, which turned out to be a trendy loft setup in an even trendier part of town. I offered the medal at $1,000, which price was immediately accepted, and in retrospect I think could have added another zero on to the price and still made the sale. Money was left on the table, but the medal had gotten back to its proper home. In time I was able to acquire a replacement (in silver) from Q. David Bowers, and another in gold from the Ford collection.

Fast forward to 2013. When your coin dealer calls you up and tells you not to buy anything until you talk to him, you call back as soon as possible. In this case, the obverse die for the MCMA medal had appeared upon the great flea market of the Internet - eBay. I regularly check eBay for Gobrechtiana but in this case had not checked for a few days so my agent, John Kraljevich, beat me to it. After a quick phone call he agreed to represent me on the item. I nervously watched the item all week and called up John a few minutes before the auction expired, just to double check everything was solid with the bidding strategy. We agreed on our maximum bid and were successful in acquiring the die for substantially less. A week or so later the die landed at my local post office in good order.

The opportunity to acquire an uncancelled United States Mint die is a rare thing. A few such pieces exist in the ANA and ANS collections (described in Secret History of the First United States Mint, my book co-authored with Joel Orosz in 2011 – a shout out here to Mark Borkhart who has also done research in this area). The Treasury Department has, on occasion, “reclaimed” dies which escaped the Mint. This is no concern here as this particular medal did not represent legal tender but was simply a contract job between the Mint and the MCMA. Nevertheless, it is a product of Gobrecht’s hand, and as far as I know, his only surviving die. It will be on display at the Chicago ANA.

To read the complete issue, see: E-Gobrecht Volume9, Issue8 (www.seateddimevarieties.com/103-E-GobrechtVolume9,Issue8.pdf)

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