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After two years of searching...

RexfordRexford Posts: 1,216 ✭✭✭✭✭
in U.S. Coin Forum

I finally found one of these! It’s not the best example, but it’s the only piece I’ve been able to locate since I first found out about the type, and I’ve been actively searching for one since then. I had a saved search for it on eBay and managed to grab it as soon as it was listed.

1866 Medal, Bronzed copper, 60mm. By William H. Key. Julian-CM-14. Obv. Liberty head l. in starry diadem, LIGHT LIBERTY LAW. Rev. 13-line history of the New York Free Academy, renamed College of the City of New York in 1866.


I first found out about this medal in 2018, when I had just graduated from the City College of New York, after seeing an example online.

City College was first established in 1847 as the Free Academy, a men’s university and the first free public institution of higher education in the United States. At this time it was located at Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street in New York City, in the Free Academy Building (below).

In 1866, the name of the college was changed from the Free Academy to the College of the City of New York (and in 1929 would become the present City College of New York). William H. Key, whose name may be familiar to several members of this forum, was commissioned to engrave the dies for a medal commemorating the occasion and to strike copies at the Philadelphia Mint.

In the October 1867 edition of the American Journal of Numismatics (Vol. 2, No. 6), there appears an article that discusses the medal and includes the mintage figures. I’ve attached a full copy below:



Some interesting excerpts:

“This Medal has never been regularly brought into the Numismatic market, and never will be; though it is understood that a few impressions in bronze can be obtained, on application to the Janitors of the College, from subscribers who own more specimens than they desire to keep. The subscribers are bound by a mutual promise not to dispose of these for less than Seven Dollars ($7.00), a price which may not appear too high, on reading the following statement. Such statistics as are therein conveyed ought, it would seem, to be recorded in this Journal, on the production of any new Medal of importance in New York or elsewhere, in order that Numismatists may have its exact value, both in itself, and in regard to rarity.”

Seven dollars in 1867 was quite a sum of money for any numismatic item, let alone a bronze medal. It is also interesting how definitively the author writes that the piece will never be brought into the numismatic market - yet of course, here I am buying one a century and a half later.

A description of the design:

“The Dies were cut by Mr. Wm. H. Key, of the United States Mint, Philadelphia, but the idea of the Devices and Legends originated with one of the Faculty . . . The Obverse bears a Female Head in profile, facing to the left with hair flowing from beneath a plain fillet, and with a circlet of stars from the forehead to the temple. Above the head is the Legend: LIGHT, LIBERTY, LAW, a motto never before used, as far we know, and intended to express, concisely and with alliteration, a fundamental principle of the American educational system. Law is denoted by the fillet or band, Liberty by the flowing hair, Light by the coronal of stars. Of these latter four are visible; and if we assume that three more would be seen on the other side of the head, if it were shown, this starry circlet will typify the Trivium and Quadrivium which made up the circle of the sciences in the old universities: Grammar, Dialectics, Rhetoric, Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy. This somewhat recondite application of the distich:

Gramm. loquitur, Dia. vera docet, Rhet. verba colorat, Mus. canit, Ar. numerat, Geo. ponderat, Ast. colit astra

was however an after-thought, or a coincidence not originally contemplated. The Reverse bears the inscription: THE NEW YORK FREE ACADEMY WAS FOUNDED, 1847, BY ACT OF THE LEGISLATURE AND VOTE OF THE CITIZENS; AND ITS NAME WAS CHANGED, 1866, BY ACT TAKING EFFECT MAY 1, TO COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK . . . It is only justice to Mr. Key to remark that his design of the head, his arrangement of the lettering, and his manual execution of the work in all its parts and details, were most satisfactory to his employers, and that his production has elicited the praise of all persons competent to form an opinion on such subjects.”

The mintage figures at the end of the article are broken down by composition, and reveal a quite sparse issuance, with only 290 pieces struck in the most common metal, Bronzed copper.

The article begins by stating that “The Reverse-Die of this Medal has now been defaced, so that it cannot be again used. Both it and the Obverse-Die are now at the College, corner of Lexington avenue and 23rd Street.”

As the college switched locations in the early 1900s to the present Gothic-style campus between 130th and 141st streets in Hamilton Heights, Manhattan (pictured below), I wondered if the dies for the medal, if retained by the college as described, had managed to survive the move.

To find out, I contacted the City College Archives and was given the following response (this was all in 2018): “I am familiar with the medal that you mention that was struck in 1866 to commemorate the first change of the name of this institution to The College of the City of New York. The City College Archives Collection in the City College Medals Collection has an example of this medal struck in bronze, and the cancelled dies that were used to strike the medal. The collection also has a plaster mold of the obverse and of the reverse.”

So naturally, I paid a visit to the Archives, where I found the dies and plaster mold, along with the College’s bronzed copper copy of the medal (not pictured):




As you can see, the reverse die is gouged at either end so that additional examples cannot be struck, as described in the 1867 article.

The archivist also told me:

“I came across those two dies being used as paperweights on one of the counters here in the Archives room, and put them together with the plaster cast and the bronze example.”

I wonder how many other old dies are out there being used as paperweights!

Gobrecht's Engraved Mature Head Large Cent Model
https://www.instagram.com/rexrarities/?hl=en

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