I went to a political items convention last week, the APIC National Convention which was held in Danvers, Masschusetts. There were many great items to see and purchase. My big purchase was an 1825 John Quincy Adams inaugural medal. The dies for this piece were made by Moritz Furst, a Hungarian immigrant. Furst designed many medals for the U.S. Mint in the early 19th century. The piece is in white metal. It was also struck in silver, which is rarer, but this is rare enough. NGC has graded three of these pieces, this piece an MS-61 and two in MS-62. John Quincy Adams was no too pleased with this piece. He made a comment that the medalist was both a poor man and a poor artist. He had ordered 10 pieces in silver. Fewer than that exist today. The white metal pieces are more common with perhaps 15 or so survivors. Many of them are beat-up, and are not as nice as this one.
I suppose it must be white metal because that's how they were made, but if you ask me (from those pictures) it looks more like bronze. Do you know why he didn't like the piece? It doesn't look bad to me. Did they give him too much chin and not enough hair?
I have no idea why he didn’t like it and personally, I think it’s a beautiful coin. Glad to see that it’s in the collection of someone who will treasure it.
The bronze look may indicate that it's one of the mint's re-strikes? Though, how could that get by the TPG?
The color is whiter than it appears in the photos. I may have to go back and fool with the white balance. Some sources say a bronze example exists, but it doesn’t. Adams didn’t say why he didn’t like it. He was only turned off by it.
Did not the mint re-strike these with the original dies on bronze planchets? Or maybe they used a different reverse? I'm a bit shaky on the details of something I read a long time ago about these.
Heritage's photo's from it's most recent sale definitely show it much more as white metal: https://coins.ha.com/itm/u.s.-mint-...014.s?type=DA-DMC-PCGS-USCoins-1374-05082024#
Okay, let's try this version of the photo. The piece does have some tanish toning which makes it look a little brown, but it's mostly white.
Maybe the portrait was too “Roman” for him? That’s the first thing I noticed. But who knows. They sure were big on promoting science back then.
The Adams inaugural medal did not make it to the 100 Greatest American Medals and Tokens book, but there were comments about the portrait that appeared on the Adams Indian peace medal which did. The facial profile on the peace medal was the same as the one on the inaugural medal although the shoulders were different. "There is too much projection on the point of the nose, the head and shoulders are too big, and look to beong to a very fat man." Maybe Adams was looking for view of himself on the medal when he was much younger. That is frequently the approach for some king's images on coins. Their looks never age.
Very handsome medal. I'm envious, since I am a maternal descendant of JQA. I do have a coin pedigreed to his collection off at NGC right now. It's been in their system since January and I'm still waiting. Got the photos, though. I waited 13 years for the chance to buy this coin.
I got into the wrong family tree, just a maternal descendant of the Dewey family. No coin provenance that I know of.
You might be surprised- you never know what kind of ancestors you might have in the woodpile. The further you go back in time, with the exponential expansion of the generations, the more potential you have for a famous ancestor. Somebody once mentioned he was distantly descended from William the Conqueror. I discovered that I am as well. As are thousands and thousands of people. For instance, Google's AI bot says: There's no question that Genghis Khan was likely the most prolific bio-dad in history. He had a lot of ... umm... conquests.
But did Genghis Khan have a coin collection? Admiral Dewey and Thomas "Dewey Defeats Truman" Dewey are distant cousins, that's good enough for me I guess. That "exponential expansion of the generations" is reduced by the fact that they all married their parent's friend's kids. I feel like I should post a coin. Here's one that might have also once belonged to JQA. One of the most fascinating stories I've ever been a part of over on CCF. Off topic!
Oh, wow! "Silver token, unknown". Love it! I think it's still on-topic, because we're still talking about JQA.
From the time the owner first posted it on CCF, it took over 4 years for PCGS to finally authenticate it and Stack's sold it for $2.5M. That thread, which went on the whole time, and overall story was epic. I analyzed the images to death and researched everything I could find - the stolen Yale example, the earliest published sketches, etc. I think the funniest bit was that Heritage and some anonymous Colonial "expert" immediately called it a fake. But you're in the Quincy family! It could have been yours!
That IS a fascinating tale! What a treasure! I mean, that's an amazing coin to begin with, but ... with the pedigree... wow! As to my family connection, it's pretty distant. I haven't seen the tree, but it's been known in my family for generations. My maternal great-grandmother was an Adams. (Apologies to @johnmilton for the slight thread hijack. Resume original topic.)
To continue the hijack, my grandmother had a cousin, Berdella Davis, who claimed to be related to Jefferson Davis.
