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V21 2018 INDEX       E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 21, Number 28, July 15, 2018, Article 29

BOWERS ON COLLECTING MEDALS

On July 11, 2018, the Mint News Blog published an article by Dave Bowers on collecting medals. Here's an excerpt. -Editor

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Today in 2018 the collecting of medals is at an all-time high. This is due to several aspects. First, an extensive collection of medals can be formed for a low cost. One of the most important sets ever produced is the Society of Medalists series issued from 1930 into the 1980s at the rate of two per year. Strikings were made in bronze (the most attractive to my eyes) and silver.

Well-known American sculptors and artists were invited to produce medals with designs of their choice. This was a remarkable opportunity, as the standard arrangement was for a patron or sponsor to hire a medalist and direct him or her as to what to depict. A full set of Society of Medalist issues, well over 100 specimens, costs less than $10,000. While that amount of money is not trifling, the same amount will not get you very far in building a type set of United States coins or even a collection of American Gold Eagles from 1986 to date.

The article quotes John Pinkerton's 1789 An Essay on Medals. -Editor

The amusement arising from medals is so common and universal that we meet with few people who have not formed a little collection of some kind or another. As no axiom is looked upon as more certain than that even the minutest principles of the human mind have been the same in all ages, we must be induced to suppose that the study of medals is almost as ancient as medals themselves. . .

The principal and most common source of pleasure arising from the science of medals is their workmanship. The motives of delight which owe their origin to the other efforts of imitative art will here likewise of course predominate. A philosophic inquiry into the prime causes of our pleasures arising from art, though it would make an admirable subject for a treatise. . .

Not to enter then into that profound subject, this we know, that the most barbarous nations are more pleased with the rudest efforts of art than with the most admirable works of nature; and that, in proportion to the powers of the mind that are large and various, such, likewise, are the pleasures which it receives from those superlative productions of art, which can only be the offspring of vast genius. It follows that the creation of art alike pleases the most uninformed and the most cultivated mind.

To read the complete article, see:
Bowers on Collecting Medals (http://mintnewsblog.com/bowers-on-collecting-collecting-medals-in-2018-and-in-1789/)



Wayne Homren, Editor

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