1797 George Washington General Grand Master Medal. Musante GW-29, Baker-288B. Brass. Engrailed edge. VF-20 (PCGS).

35.3 mm. 257.7 grains. Light olive brown over much of the surface, while some deeper ruddy brown patina is noted in the recesses. A trace of darker encrustation is noted in the reverse periphery, near 12 o’clock, and tiny green deposits are seen elsewhere in the dentils. Some trivial porosity and a few ancient scratches are noted under magnification, but the first impression is of a fairly smooth and glossy medal. A faint planchet crack is noted from the edge left of the date, extending into the bust, while a couple of smaller separations are noted at the rims. Such as made defects are not unusual on these medals. In fact, several of the few known pieces exhibit some type of flan split, while others are corroded or holed. This can only be described fairly as perfectly pleasant in the context of all the known survivors. This is from a later state of the dies, with a horizontal crack through the central obverse, extending from the hair knot to the field, just left of Washington’s chin. This is a very rare medal and opportunities to acquire it are few and far between. The 1981 Garrett Collection sale included an extraordinary silver example, as well as a uniface piece. Similarly, the Ford sale in 2004 included a lone brass example and was the last we handled until the 2019 offering of the William Spohn Baker Collection. More recently, the rediscovery of the unique plain edge example provenanced back to R. Coulton Davis (1890) created a lot of excitement when it brought $84,000 in our Spring 2022 sale. The cabinets of David Dreyfuss, Gilbert Steinberg, Lucien LaRiviere, and Charles Wharton were all missing this type, while the Fairfax Collection, offered in our May 1993 sale, included a lower grade one with a serious flan crack. The Norweb family owned a holed specimen but donated it to Western Reserve Historical Society, and it is now at Colonial Williamsburg. Through a combination of George Fuld’s survey of specimens, published in 2009, and our own efforts, we are fairly confident of 17 known survivors struck in brass, and two-sided. In addition, a couple more institutionally owned ones have been reported but remain unconfirmed. There are also two or three reported in silver, and four uniface brass ones. The silver and uniface examples were clearly special, perhaps made with different uses intended from the outset. Of the brass examples confirmed, at least eight are likely permanent residents in institutional collections, explaining why these are so rarely available. As given in our recent sale of the Davis specimen, “the connection of these medals to Peter Getz of Lancaster is both evident and undocumented. The portrait on this medal is not a precise match for those found on the 1792 private patterns by the Lancaster silversmith, but it is either by the same hand or, quite possibly, a copyist's attempt. The detail on the epaulet is quite different, but otherwise the portrait here is plainly copying the 1792 pieces by Getz. Numismatic tradition has long attributed these to Getz's hand, and even today he's as good a guess as any. Getz was an active mason in Lancaster, was master of his local lodge in 1794, and he worked as a die engraver in this era. However, Neil Musante suggested in his Medallic Washington that this medal was probably not by Getz. His reasoning is arguable (it hinged on the famous but now broken ladle owned by a Virginia Masonic lodge), but his conclusion is probably right. “The key piece of evidence in identifying the authorship of this medal was discovered in an unusual place: the archives of the descendants of Adam Eckfeldt, which hit the market in 2014. A manuscript entitled ‘An inventory of Coining Machines taken from Richard Harpers & sent to the Mint of United States by order of the Mayor of this City Aug. 29th, 1797.’ The authors of 1792: Birth of a Nation's Coinage make the assumption that Richard Harper was the son of the recently deceased minter and sawmaker John Harper of Philadelphia, who died in either late 1796 or early 1797. The inventory is fascinating, including ‘1 Coining press compleat with a Leaver without balls,’ a cutting press, a rolling press, and most everything else someone would need to operate a private mint. For our purposes, the dies on hand are most interesting. They include a single die for ‘Jersey half pence’ along with ‘2 Dies of General Washington Heads’ and ‘1 [die] of the face Masons coat of Arms.’ In other words, this 1797 inventory from the estate of John Harper appears to list the obverse and reverse dies of this exact medal. “As a coiner, Harper is not necessarily the engraver of this medal; indeed, he may have been contracted by an engraver like Getz to produce them. Saw makers weren't usually the artistic sort, but someone had to have engraved the dies for the cents Harper struck privately in 1795, now known as ‘Jefferson Head’ cents. It could have been Harper, or Getz, or someone else entirely.”

From the Sydney F. Martin Collection. Earlier ex the Lawrence R. Stack Collection, November 2006.