1797 Presidency Resigned Medal by Thomas Wyon. Musante GW-64, Baker-66. White Metal. AU Details—Damaged (PCGS).

37.6 mm. 271.8 grains. Dark gray surfaces are microporous throughout, with occasional areas of slightly deeper pitting on the obverse. Slightly lighter gray on the obverse high points, while the reverse has a soft golden overtone through the fields. Nicely struck though the flan seems to have been slightly thin at the rim toward 8 o’clock relative to the obverse. Slightly bent in this area, and with a few very minor scratches in places, but considering the great rarity of this issue and how utterly abysmal some survivors look, this is more than respectable. This die pairing seems to have been first noticed by either John Ford or Michael Hodder, as it was first written up in our 2004 Ford Sale (Part II) as from “unpublished dies.” In fact, it was this variety plated in Wayte Raymond’s 1941 monograph, The Early Medals of Washington, though no mention was made of the particulars of the dies. As rare as this series is, it is not difficult to understand how these different dies were overlooked for so long. This in itself is virtually a tradition and has continued to recent times. Neil Musante described three die varieties, but four are now known. The rarity likewise made it highly improbable that two or more would be compared side-by-side. Yet, the facts point to at least four die pairings, the most common of which is represented by just 10 medals in the writer’s census. This leaves us wondering, where are all these medals? The only viable explanation is that the dies were of such poor quality that, even striking only in soft white metal, they failed quickly, and very few impressions were produced. A number of the survivors across all die pairings are heavily pested, chipped or aggressively scratched. Of the four varieties known, Musante’s GW-63, 64, 65, and an additional one we refer to as GW-65A, the GW-64 is the second most common, with just four specimens recorded: the present example, the Ford Specimen, that in the Wayte Raymond monograph and the Bushnell-Baker example.

From the Sydney F. Martin Collection. Earlier from Presidential Coin and Antique’s sale of December 1987, lot 278; Alan Weinberg, June 2007.