MEDAL COLLECTING INTEREST SURGES

Last week’s excerpt from the Mint News Blog by Dave Bowers on collecting medals was a great reminder of some of the main reasons folks collect medals – the artistic quality, workmanship, and collecting value. As Dave noted, “an extensive collection of medals can be formed for a low cost.”

But this was not always the case. In the nineteenth century, some medals brought as much as or more than the most desirable American rare coins. In the Chapmans’ 1882 Bushnell sale, for example, a set of the Washington Seasons Medals sold for $150 and a Diplomatic Medal brought $50, compared with nice examples of an NE Shilling at $51, a 1793 chain cent at $41, a 1794 silver dollar at $81, and even Bushnell’s Brasher Doubloon at a relatively reasonable $505. While these prices may seem like a pittance today, keep in mind that in 1880 an entire 60-hour work week earned a manual laborer about $8 and a skilled blacksmith or carpenter about $11.

Interest in medals seems to be broadly returning and, as Dave noted, is growing rapidly. Membership in the Medal Collectors of America (www.medalcollectors.org) is now at an all-time high. I believe the internet has a lot to do with this resurgence, as it’s now much easier to research previously obscure pieces and to collect on an almost industrial scale using eBay and various auction houses’ online bidding platforms. These tools are available for coins too, of course, but have disproportionately impacted medals, of which there are far more different types and with historically much less printed reference material.

For example, I’ve recently been researching the early membership and award medals used by secret societies at various American colleges, such as the Porcellian Club medal above. I used to see these at coin shows and they were always inexpensive because nobody (including me) knew what most of them were. But with various online tools and databases, it’s now possible to decode most of them and understand their historical and social significance. I’ll give a brief presentation on some of what I’ve found at the MCA meeting on Thursday, August 16 at the ANA convention, in “Their Secrets Revealed! Early American College Secret Society Medals”.

There will be other opportunities to learn more about medals at the ANA convention, such as the TAMS “Meet the Experts: A Symposium on Tokens and Medals” mentioned in last week’s E-Sylum and Bob Fritsch’s Money Talks presentation “The Lure and Lore of Medals”, both of which are also scheduled for that Thursday.

And if you get intrigued by any of those events, please consider attending “Art and Memory: The Role of Medals”, in Boston on Saturday, November 10. The Medal Collectors of America and the Massachusetts Historical Society have teamed up to organize an unprecedented conference on medals and medal collecting, featuring a full day of presentations and discussion around a range of topics related to collecting and enjoying medals, with plenty of time around the edges for social enjoyment and dinner afterward. For more information and registration details, see https://www.medalcollectors.org/news/events/mca-conference-2018.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
BOWERS ON COLLECTING MEDALS (http://www.coinbooks.org/v21/esylum_v21n28a29.html)

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