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Message:: [QUOTE="cdcda, post: 10787, member: 941"]This is an interesting item. I have contacted two individuals that I thought might be able to shed some light on it, but we have not come up with an answer for you. We are left wondering though... 1. It appears like this medal has two different relief potraits - one on each side. But are they the same individual? It is hard to tell for certain. 2. We are not so certain this is Benjamin Franklin. 3. We all concur that the number on the piece is most likely an inventory number and was probably placed there by a museum or similar institution. Our educated guess is that an organization took in a quanitity of pieces from an individual and labeled the collection as 4004. This was then labeled as piece 8 from that collection. Which raises the question, did the other objects in the box have inventory numbers? To aid us in further researching this object, it would be helpful to provide us with high quality images of the edge of the object and a higher resolution of the hallmark or marking on the obverse. In any event, we all believe the piece to be old. The real question is who does it depict, who made it, and for what purpose. If the relief was only present on one side I would have proposed that it was a plaque that would have been mounted on wood, but with the relief on both edges there is more uncertainty.[/QUOTE]