"I know of none engraved. I still have about a dozen of them, all blank. From the story I remember at that young age, Menconi came to them offering to do a medal (quite certainly not for free, but I have no idea of the terms).

"That was a very nicely done piece with just a couple of minor inaccuracies not even worth bothering with. One major one was "in 1947 he was hired by Jacques Minkus to manage the coin department at Gimbels."

"He was not "hired." It was a business agreement. The department had been run by a partnership of Hans Schulman, Abe Kosoff, and Abner Kreisberg. It should come as no surprise to anyone that that did not work out. My father took it over and the deal was that rent was a flat 20% of sales, payable after the close of the month after Minkus got his remittance from the individual stores. Minkus was paying, we found out, about 10%. By the end of the 70's both the coin business and department store hours and return policies had changed enough that this was no longer tenable, and that is why we got out of the department stores."

Thanks for the background! Dave Lange agrees that the medals were left blank. -Editor

"I want to make one minor correction to Pete Smith's article about Robert Friedberg. Pete suggested that the Coin & Currency Institute engraved the back of this medal to personalize it for the recipients. The medal indeed was left blank on its back, but that was done in the event that the recipients wanted to have it engraved themselves. The example in my collection is not engraved, and I gather that Pete's specimen is likewise blank.

"Issuing a medal to honor Robert Friedberg's life and work was only appropriate, as he had done so much to popularize medal collecting. The C&CI sponsored numerous medal issues in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. These typically covered popular topics that had broad appeal and would sell well, such as the statehoods of Alaska and Hawaii and the centennial of America's Civil War. Perhaps, the most notable line of C&CI-backed medals was the series of honorees in The Hall of Fame For Great Americans. The company even produced a rare album to house these. I'm attaching a double-page ad from the February 1965 issue of The Numismatist that features both the medals and the album."