1871 Ulysses S. Grant Indian Peace Medal. Silver. Julian IP-42, Prucha-53. Choice Extremely Fine.

63.3 mm. 1513.8 grains. Pierced for suspension as issued, with an apparently original silver loop still intact, and a short piece of hide cord tied through it. Relatively light steely silver gray with some deeper gray patina in the recesses. Quite uniform in appearance and very sharp, with respectable prooflike texture remaining evident in the fields giving this a slightly more flashy appearance than is usually seen. A couple of nicks in the right field are useful for identifying this specimen, but otherwise the handling amounts to little more than the usual light hairlining and scattered marks consistent with a gently used Peace medal. The present writer has identified 57 distinct specimens of the Grant in silver, but this includes four unpierced examples that were clearly not intended for issuance among Native Americans. In addition, of those found, 14 are in institutional collections. There were two weight standards for the Grant medals, this being the lighter of them. They are struck from the same dies and there is no determinable difference in the die states between them. We have observed that the few pieces that have known indigenous provenances associated with them are of this lighter standard, but we suspect that the heaver medals were simply struck after changes in the coinage compositions were put in place in 1873. This has been off the market nearly 40 years.

From the E Pluribus Unum Collection. Earlier from our (Bowers and Ruddy's) sale of the Gerry Nelson Collection, April 1982 , lot 1599.