Featured The Delaware Commemorative Half Dollar and Related Medals

Most U.S. coin collectors are aware that there is a Delaware commemorative half dollar in the U.S. series. In addition to that piece, there were a Swedish and two medals plus three medals that were issued by the Medallic Art Company. Since we are limited to ten pictures per post, this will take a few messages.

First the Delaware commemorative. This piece was designed by Carl Schmitz. The net mintage after the unsold coins were melted was 20,993. The obverse shows the Kalmar Nyckel the ship that brought the Swedish settlers to Delaware. The reverse depicts Old Swedes Church, which is one of the oldest Protestant churches in the United States.



Years ago I obtained a copy of the program for the Delaware Tercentenary celebration. Here is a photo of the cover.



There was a photo of a clay mock-up of half dollar in this booklet which was obviously done before the design was finalized. It is interesting to note the differences.



Here is a photo of Old Swedes Church as it looks today. As you can see, there are lot of trees and bushes that get in the way of the view that appeared on the half dollar.



This booket pictured other commemorative items that were sold for the event in addition to the Delaware commemorative. The other coin was issued by Sweden, a two Karona. This is piece is half dollar sized and fairly common.



I will be back with phtos of the medals later in the day.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Where are the medals? I see a related COIN, but no medals.

 

Nice looking Commem John!

 

Now the American medals.

The first one is 35 mm. It is listed in the So-Called Dollars book HK-697. It is interesting to note that I bought this piece on 5th grade field trip, in the spring of 1960, to the John Dickenson Mansion which is just outside Dover, Delaware. The price was 50 cents, which was original issue amount. In other words these pieces were still not sold out almost 22 years after they were issued! Today this piece is worth a bit more than 50 cents.



There were two other medals that had the same design as this piece only much larger. They were in bronze at an issued price of $2.50 and silver at $7.50. Here is the bronze piece.



I have never seen nor heard of any examples of the large silver medal. A few years ago, I spent an afternoon with the foremost collector of Delward tokens, medals and script. He told me that he didn't have one, and he knew of only piece that was in the hands of Delaware family.

The year 1938 was not a great one for the economy. The nation was just comming off the second dip in the Great Depression, which happened in 1937. The $7.50 price was a lot of money to spend on a medal. In the mid 1950s many of the people who worked in my father's holly wreath plant made the minimum wage of $1.00 an hour. Given that withholding and Social Security were taken from people's wages, that $7.50 medal probably cost the better part of a person's weekly earnings in 1938.

 

And now the Swedish medals. I purchased these two pieces in an exonumia auction that was held in Massachusetts. Not surprisingly, I was the only bidder, and I was indeed very lucky. I have searched for these medals on the Internet and have found only few. They all had problems. These two are very nice.

First the bronze.



And the silver.



Both of them came came in little round boxes. Here is the box for the silver piece.



And the bronze



The writing on the second one indicates that it was bought at the 1939 New York World's Fair, which was far removed from the one day celebration in Delaware.

 

Here are a couple of other items from the Delaware Tercentenary celebration. The first is a holder that housed multiple examples of the Delaware commemorative half dollar.

Here is the cover.



And the inside.



Here is small book that was called an "Almanac" that was sold during the celebration.



There are also pieces of china which were illustrated in the program, but since those are not my sort of thing, I don't have any of them.

 

SUPER information!

Thanks for that.