California sculptor Spero Anargyos (1915-2004) was commissioned to design and model the Hawaii Statehood Medal, Medallic Art Company catalog number 1959-092. His original model had one of the Hawaiian Islands misspelled. (I don’t remember which one.) The error was discovered after dies were made and an unknown number were struck and issued. Thus two varieties exist.

More than fifty gold medals were made. Numbers 3 through 53, 59, 69 and 100 were serially numbered according to company records. No record of number 1 and 2 exist, but these may have been presented to the governor at the time, James K. Kealoha, who also received 154 unnumbered silver. Three thousand serially numbered silver were issued, in addition to 29,599 unnumbered bronze. All medals were 2 1/2-inch (63mm) diameter.

Coin and Currency Institute of New York was the official distributor for the medal in U.S., the firm of Edward D. Sultan, Ltd. of Honolulu was the distributor for Hawaii.

The mintage figures are extremely high for a fine art medal, but it proved the popularity of the medal. This was evidence of the empathy the public had for statehood status.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web