Fantasy Electrotype "1779" (ca. 1848) Henry Lee at Paulus Hook Medal. Unknown American Workshop. As Betts-575, Julian MI-5, Adams-Bentley 9. Joined Copper Shells. Nearly As Made.
45.5 mm. 33.59 grams. Square filed edge. Dark brown with good eye appeal and in-hand heft, a filled electrotype. We offered a virtually identical example in our November 2019 sale of the John W. Adams Collection, lot 2051, in which our cataloger ably described this enigmatic type: "A curious production, made by someone who knew what a Lee medal should look like, but not actually made from a real Lee medal. Rather than being joined at the center point of the edge, these are two shells - one for obverse, one for reverse - that show a seam at their peripheries where they were joined to a separate rim. The surfaces are typical of an electrotype: wavy, basined, totally unlike a struck piece. The shells were made from a mould done by someone who was a competent artist but not a great electrotypist, with both sides showing raised relics of file marks on the mould, doubled impressions into the mould face, and heavy after-production filing on both the raised rim and the perpendicular edge. The portrait and the lettering styles are rather unlike Wright's original work and Barber's copyist attempt. So what are these things? Adams and Bentley have suggested that these are a set of ancient "mystery dies" that represent an early copy, perhaps even the dies that were produced after Wright's death to create a medal for Lee himself. We disagree. The fabric is of a wholly-produced electrotype (i.e. not something made as a copy of something else), and no one has ever so much as whispered that a struck version may exist. Indeed, the only evidence whatsoever that this production existed before the 1850s is the word of a Swedish curator who claims that their records indicate that the specimen in the Royal Cabinet collection was accessed before 1832. He wasn't there then, and we've seen too many botched accession records to put much stock in the claim. The evidence that this is an American production of the 1850s is voluminous. When William Cowper Prime authored his Coins, Medals, and Seals: Ancient and Modern in 1861, his plate CIV is clearly taken from one of these. Strobridge's June 1863 sale included an electrotype as lot 1166, almost certainly one of these given that no original exists to make an electrotype copy from. The bronze piece that was in the New York State Library collection when inventoried and published in 1857 was probably one of these too. But who made them, and from what? The answer may be found in W. Elliot Woodward's sale of February 1887. Woodward's catalogs are as valuable for their commentary and secret-telling about the backrooms of the numismatic scene as for any lot descriptions, and his long explanation of a series of electrotypes made by the fraudster Thomas Wyatt and failed coin dealer Daniel Groux are just such a circumstance. On page 37, Woodward tells the whole story. Many persons who knew something of American numismatics as early as 1840, will remember the old French adventurer. whose baptismal name was Jacques Groux, but who was generally known as Prof. Daniel E. Groux. Before he came to America he traveled extensively as a courier, with Mr. Walters of England. and afterward with Prince Galitzin of Russia, by both of whom he was highly recommended for his honesty, his skill in cookery, as a courier, and for various other accomplishments. He managed to get possession of a large and valuable numismatic collection, which he brought with him to America. Afterward, for several years, he figured here in various capacities, as valet, scullion, cook, etc., subsequently as a professor and a writer on financial matters and political subjects. In New York City he made the acquaintance of Thomas Wyatt, of unsavory reputation in connection with a fraudulent issue of American coins. Groux entered into partnership with him for the purpose of conducting a numismatic business. He sought the acquaintance of several distinguished men in roping them into an interest and quasi-endorsement of some of his schemes. Daniel Webster, Charles Francis Adams, Dr. Winslow Lewis and others were amongst his victims. This somewhat long explanation seems necessary to explain the "reason for being" of the following casts and facsimiles of medals. The National and Presidential medals were first made in facsimile by Wyatt, and the following set, with the others which were manufactured by Groux, were sold to Dr. Winslow Lewis for a large sum, and came to me when purchasing his collections. All are facsimiles, some copper, some silver-plated, and being fairly well made they answer a useful purpose and serve as objects for study and comparison. The lots that follow in Woodward's sale include 13 different groupings, mostly quite large. Lot 873 is described as "National Medals for victories of the Army and Navy; includes Henry Lee, copied from original; copper, silver-plated, etc. 37 pcs." Groux's partner in this plan, Thomas Wyatt, is perhaps best remembered for his fake New England coins, but first made his name on the numismatic scene for his 1848 publication Memoirs of the Generals, Commodores, And Other Commanders: Who Distinguished Themselves in the American Army and Navy during the Wars of the Revolution and 1812, And Who Were Presented with Medals by Congress, For Their Gallant Services. Considered the first work on American medals, the Lee medal is among those described - and depicted. It is on plate 4 of the Wyatt book, on a plate engraved by W.L. Ormsby using a medal-ruling machine, a contraption that copied illustrations directly from medals. The illustration on Wyatt's plate is one of these: a fanciful copy of the Lee medal in precisely this form. Interestingly, Wyatt's first book, which preceded Memoirs by two years, was entitled History of the Kings of France …, illustrated with plates of medals made by Ormsby with the medal-ruling machine. The 1887 Woodward sale of the Wyatt-Groux copies included three large lots of copies of the exact sorts of French medals that book depicted, adding up to 232 pieces in all. For more on Wyatt, David Fanning's article in the Winter 2016 issue of The Asylum entitled "Thomas Wyatt and the Birth of Numismatic Fraud in the United States" details the man's schemes well, including an 1856 enterprise to sell a completely inauthentic Good Samaritan shilling to an unidentified dupe to whom Wyatt wrote that he had given "10 Revolutionary medals for it." One wonders if his phony-baloney Lee medal was one of them. This production exists in two forms: as an electrotype, as here, and as a cast made from these electrotypes, as mentioned in Woodward's note. The casts exist in both copper and white metal (the ANS has all three forms in their collection). This enigma is clearly related to some other seemingly inexplicable productions known as both electrotypes and casts, such as the nonsense muling of a Washington obverse and a Stony Point reverse (see Stack's Bowers March 2015, lot 32024 for a cast of an "original" electrotype), whose workmanship and crudity strongly suggests production by the same workshop. The bizarre Washington obverse seen on that Stony Point muling is also found married in electrotype form with the reverse of a small size Jefferson Peace medal, as in W.W.C. Wilson, lot 873. All of these designs - the Washington obverse, the Stony Point reverse, the Lee medal obverse and reverse, and the Jefferson Peace medal reverse - were present in the Wyatt-Groux grouping in Woodward's February 1887 sale. Just because the "mystery dies" Lee medal is a fantastic concoction from the mid-19th century does not render it worthless; in fact, a Wyatt "original" Good Samaritan shilling is a five-figure item. Your cataloger has not seen many of these, and most are aftercasts, not an "original" electrotype, as here. This is an interesting and highly collectible item from the very earliest days of serious American medal collecting."

Estimate: $750