(Ca. 1766) Benjamin Franklin, L.L.D. Medal. Betts-545. Bronze, 36 mm. MS-62 (PCGS).

344.6 grains. A desirable example of a classic Franklin rarity. Lustrous and glossy dark chocolate brown with superlative obverse eye appeal and only a smattering of trivial marks. The reverse shows the usual degree of contact marks, along with a batch of shallow scratches at center that blend in at most angles to the light. The relief of Franklin's portrait is fully realized, and the overall visual impression is highly favorable. The usual raised die injury is seen close to the reverse rim at 12 o'clock (assuming the dies are aligned in medal turn). This important medal is widely considered the first medallic portrait of Benjamin Franklin. Unsigned, the authorship of the portrait has been attributed to Isaac Gosset by Charles Coleman Sellers ( Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture, where he suggests the die was accomplished by William Mossop of Dublin) and to Patience Wright by Daniel Fearon, who suggests John Kirk engraved the obverse. Interestingly, Gosset's portrait of General James Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, was turned into a medal by John Kirk, an effort whose work and striking texture is quite similar to this medal. Mr. Margolis notes that the likely origin of this portrait, the Gosset portrait wax, was "believed to have been done in 1766," which helps narrow down the day of this medal better. The dating of this medal has usually been placed in the early 1760s, soon after Franklin received his honorary Doctor of Laws (L.L.D.) degree from St. Andrew's in Edinburgh (1759), the University of Edinburgh (1762), and Oxford (1762). However, most Revolutionary War-era portraits of Franklin that were engraved or printed in England referred to him with his honorary degree suffix, so this could just as easily be a medal from the 1770s as the 1760s. It is almost certainly earlier than the 1777 B. Franklin of Philadelphia medal, which shows him in the character of an American tradesman more than his typical pre-Revolutionary character as an honorable man of science, but it is not necessarily 15 years earlier. That two of these were in the Ford holdings, a collection of collections if there ever was one, should not be an indication of its commonness. Ford's two, offered as lots 330 and 331 in our (Stack's) Ford XIV sale, came from the Virgil Brand Collection and the Wayte Raymond estate. Brand's came from his 1909 purchase of the Dr. Thomas Hall Collection and had likely been off the market for at least a century when it sold in 2006. Raymond's could have been acquired at any point during his half-century career and was hidden from view for nearly as long, so Ford's pair represented not just two medals, but essentially a century's worth of public offerings. The piece in the May 2001 LaRiviere sale had been acquired decades earlier from George Fuld, who owned it in the mid 1950s when he wrote the first catalog of Franklin medals, a work that was published in The Numismatist in December 1956. The piece in our (Stack's) January 2005 Americana sale from the Gilbert Steinberg Collection had been previously off the market since 1973. The only other specimens sold publicly within recent memory are the John W. Adams piece that realized $3,818.75 in our November 2015 Baltimore Auction (long held privately, in the collections of Ted Craige and Mr. Adams, since at least 1967 when it was acquired by Craige) and our March 2023 offering of an example from the Yale University Art Gallery, that realized $7,800 and had been off the market longer than anyone reading these words has been alive. In a half century, just six of these have sold at auction, three of which had been off the market for the better part of a century; the others had been held for periods of at least 30 years.

From the Richard Margolis Collection. Earlier from Spink & Son by private treaty, March 1978.

Estimate: $5000