I am looking for some help from the Numismatic community. I have acquired approximately 250 Papal medals from an eBay seller in upstate New York. He acquired them, purportedly, from the sister of a Roman Catholic Cardinal after his death. I am currently preparing the Papal medals for inclusion into an auction at either Heritage or Bowers. There seems to be some consensus that says that if I could prove the provenance of the medals that they would be more sellable. The last of the medals was the Papal medal of 2016, year four, of Frances reign. There were three Cardinals that died after 2015. One of them was Bernard Frances Law who was an only child, therefore, he could not have a sister that would have sold these metals The other Cardinals were William Wakefield Baum and William Henry Keeler. I have been able to find out that Cardinal Keeler has two sisters both living in Toronto. The seller was very forthcoming in telling me that the sister who sold these medals wanted only cash and would not allow him to keep any of the photographs that she showed him showing the Cardinal receiving some of these medals from the Pope. He also showed me pictures of a chalice the was made from the Almy company in Spain for the Cardinal. I could not find out anything from them after repeated calls, except the for Cardinals Baum and Keeler, they bought shirts from them. Cardinal Baum also died in 2015, he might have received the 2016 medal, but I doubt it. It’s my guess that William Henry Keeler was the Papal medals collector however I have no proof of that, merely conjecture. I have obviously looked through the Internet extensively, but I cannot find any reference to either of these two Cardinals being Papal medals collectors. I am asking the community to help me to see if anyone out there knows for a fact which cardinal could’ve been the collector. I’m more than happy to take any PM but would love to start a conversation on the boards. Thanks very much for all your help.
Heck, my accumulation is a lot more limited, but I am always happy to do a "show-n-tell" session with them. Z
