ERRORS ON MEDALS

MEDAL EDITOR NEEDED

Somebody goofed at this medal maker. They struck 1,500 medals with an incorrect skyline on the obverse for an Ironman sports event in Syracuse, New York. Repeat, I said Syracuse..

After the medals were awarded to the athletes they learned the skyline was not that of Syracuse. It was the skyline of Rochester. The medal maker in North Attleboro, Mass, agreed to strike 1,500 new medals with the correct skyline.

It is easy to make an error on medals Usually it is lettering. Pictorial elements are often more difficult. Any person shown has to be the correct portrait Clothing has to be of the correct period.. Any scene has to be congruous. You can't show an airplane above a 19th century scene. So many things can be shown in error it is necessary for the designer or artist to do his homework, to research his subject

As a medal researcher I have learned of many of these errors. It required its own category -- Errors On Medals.

When I archived Medallic Art Company medals I learned they were not without fault.. But their record was astounding! Of over 6,000 medals I cataloged. I found only three medals with major errors. Two were man made, and one was mechanical -- a broken tracing point on the Janvier machine.

This was to the credit of our medal editor, no less than a vice president, Julius Lauth. Not only did he issue commissions to artists, he demanded that they furnish the source of any questionable pictorial element. He would examine every inch of a model a sculptor would submit. It had to have correct lettering and be perfect in every element. Two letters transposed in a legend once, and a name misspelled once. Pretty good odds.

To read the complete articles, see:
Syracuse Ironman event hands out medals featuring wrong city (http://nypost.com/2015/06/23/syracuse-ironman-event-hands-out-medals-featuring-wrong-city/)
Oopsy Syracuse Ironman Medals Display Rochesters Skyline (www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2015/06/oopsy_syracuse_ironman
_medals_display_rochesters_skyline.html)

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