DOYLE NOVEMBER 4, 2025 WASHINGTONIA SALE

George Washington's well-documented aversion to representation on currency notwithstanding, a life as consequential as his inevitably earned monetary and medallic plaudits. Even before he was first featured on Treasury Notes in the 1840s and Federally-issued circulating U.S. currency in the 1860s (which would have chagrined him), Washington appeared on medals and tokens within his lifetime. Some tokens and medals depicting him are exceedingly rare, even unique, others are quite common. His likeness even appeared on Civil War dog tags and currency issued by the Confederacy, as both sides invoked his image and revered persona in support of their respective causes.

Some collectors of U.S. tokens and medals (material broadly defined as "exonumia") choose to focus on depictions of Washington, and prominent numismatists and researchers have made efforts to catalog medallic appearances of the First President. Numerous such efforts have been attempted since the nineteenth century, notably U.S. Mint Director James Ross Snowden's A Description of the Medal of Washington; of National and Miscellaneous Medals published in 1861, covering mainly Washington medals in the Mint's own cabinet. William Spohn Baker's 1885 Medallic Portraits of Washington is a widely-lauded work on the topic; original copies were voted the 49th most desirable piece of numismatic literature by the membership of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society in 2007. George Fuld and Russell Rulau, two of the last century's foremost experts on American exonumia, published two expansions of Baker's work in the 1980s (a centennial edition) and 1990s; Fuld published an expansion of Baker on his own in 1965. Neil Musante's two-volume 2016 work Medallic Washington is a must-own for collectors of numismatic Washingtonia. Many of the finest minds in American numismatics have dedicated some part of their research efforts to cataloging as comprehensively as possible medallic depictions of Washington, and some of the finest collectors of American coins, tokens, medals, and paper money have built sophisticated collections of such material.

Doyle's November 4, 2025 auction includes several notable Washington medals. The marquee item is an original bronze "Washington Before Boston" Comitia Americana medal. Jean-Antoine Houdon's famous bust of Washington served as the basis for this design and the obverse of the "Fill Blessed Sun" medal, discussed below, and many other medallic depictions of Washington, including John Flanagan's design, which appeared on the obverse of the Washington quarter from 1932 to 2021, probably the version of the bust most familiar to the numismatically-uninitiated.

 

The Comitia Americana "Washington Before Boston" medal honored Washington's March 1776 recapture of Boston, the first commemorative medal authorized by the Continental Congress. Its reverse depicts Washington and officers observing the British evacuation from their fortified positions on Dorchester Heights. Both the obverse and reverse designs have been restruck and reproduced countless times over the nearly two-and-a-half centuries since the medals debuted, making it one of the most recognizable of all early American medals; indeed, an example of the Washington Before Boston medal holds the number two ranking in Q. David Bowers' 2007 book 100 Greatest Medals and Tokens (Lot 5).

 

 

Washington appears in distinctive military garb on the obverses of two different versions of the 1805 Eccleston medal included in our sale. A large bronze medal with a high-relief portrait of Washington in full military regalia and armor commissioned in 1805 by Daniel Eccleston, a British Quaker radical whose travels in North America in the years leading up to the American Revolution included a meeting with Washington. The medal's reverse text recognizes Washington's many achievements, with an Indigenous man flanked by text reading "THE LAND WAS OURS," complicating the medal's celebration of our country's first Chief Executive. One of the medals included in the sale is an original (Lot 6) while the other is a cast of a late die state example surrounded by a thick bronze band. Measuring 112mm in diameter and weighing in at over one and a half pounds, this piece of numismatic Washingtonia is far rarer than the medal from which its central device is based (Lot 7).

 

A mid-19th century restrike of the c. 1806 "Sansom" medal lauds Washington's voluntary relinquishing of the Presidency in 1797 with classical imagery. A haughty bust of Washington appears on the obverse. Restrikes of this medal were produced into the twentieth century, underscoring the popularity of medals depicting Washington as coin collecting exploded in popularity across the United States (Lot 8).

 

An 1853-dated white metal "Fill Blessed Sun" medal takes inspiration from Revolution-era paper money, casting Washington as the sun at the center of a constellation of stars and thirteen interlocking rings, representing the colonies united. The medal bears a Houdon-based bust of Washington regarded by specialists as among the greatest ever to grace an American medal. It was likely produced after its stated date, purportedly the personal specimen of Charles Ira Bushnell, the nineteenth century numismatist who commissioned the medal (Lot 9).

 

Rounding out our medallic portrait gallery is a centennial medal with an absolutely beautiful reverse design in which Washington's likeness is one device among many. This gilt "Danish Medal" was struck and issued for the Centennial Exposition that took place in Philadelphia in 1876. Medallic depictions of Washington from this event are many -- readers are encouraged to read Musante's or Fuld and Rulau's catalogs to get a sense of just how diverse the range of tokens and medals is -- but the Danish Medal is among the most beautiful. Washington's likeness appears encircled by a wreath, flanked by cherubs holding a halo of thirteen stars, above a heraldic eagle clutching arrows, an olive branch, and a banner with our nation's motto "E. PLURIBUS UNUM" in its talons. Its obverse features allegorical representations of five females, Columbia (representing the United States) with a cap in the center presenting wreaths to figures representing Art and Mechanics on the viewer's left and Commerce and Agriculture on the viewer's right. The gilt version is less common than its ungilded counterparts (Lot 10).

These half-dozen medals offer diverse visions of Washington that, taken together, demonstrate not only the many roles he took on over the course of his life and the many meanings his life had to his countrymen, but the reverence felt for him by succeeding generations of Americans and people around the world.

To read the complete article, see:
Numismatic Washingtonia (https://www.doyle.com/story/numismatic-washingtonia/?pc=29)

For more information, or to bid, see:
Coins, Medals & Sports Memorabilia (https://www.doyle.com/auction/25cs03-coins-medals--sports-memorabilia/?au=9109)

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