Gold Macabre Medal by Jacob Perkins from Norweb-Partrick

Zoins

This macabre skull and crossbones Washington Funeral Medal GW-71A is coming up in the Partrick sale.

There's just two now, this Norweb-Partrick specimen and the Garrett-Partrick specimen.

It's holed / pierced for suspension. Imagine wearing this on your chest!

What's really interesting is the speculation that this is struck over a coin but with none of the undertype showing. How likely is this?

Each of the two known examples of this Perkins creation was probably struck over a circulating gold coin, likely a Spanish four escudos; no trace of the undertype is evident on the present piece.

Here's the provenance:

Ex: L.F. Montanye (H.G. Sampson, 4/1881), lot 565; (H.G. Sampson, 6/1882), lot 388; Later, Liberty Holden; Emory May Norweb; Norweb Family Collection (Stack's, 11/2006), lot 2122; Donald G. Partrick.

coinsarefun

I’ve been watching this piece as well. Incredible in gold!.
I would tend to agree that it’s overstruck.

Zoins

@coinsarefun said:
I’ve been watching this piece as well. Incredible in gold!.
I would tend to agree that it’s overstruck.

If there's no evidence of overstriking, why would you think it's overstruck? From your Dan Carr and Ron Landis pieces, are any of them so well done that you can't tell?

Is the theory that people back then just couldn't make gold planchets?

Namvet69

My kinda skull and crossbones. What was the last gavel price? Peace Roy

291fifth

The dating on the medal is interesting. Washington's Birthday is Feb. 11, which is what it was under the Julian calendar in use in Virginia at the time he was born. The date of his death is listed as December 15, not December 14. I wonder why?

coinsarefun

@Zoins said:

@coinsarefun said:
I’ve been watching this piece as well. Incredible in gold!.
I would tend to agree that it’s overstruck.

If there's no evidence of overstriking, why would you think it's overstruck? From your Dan Carr and Ron Landis pieces, are any of them so well done that you can't tell?

Is the theory that people back then just couldn't make gold planchets?

.
.
I have one DC that is barley showed an OS. I had to look for a long time to see a faint indication.
With Ron, he told me he didn’t like the way OS look and looked confusing. He said he would do something the get a cleaner OS. I told him I do want to see some but not a ton.
I’ll ask him what he did or was going to do. Also, maybe gold content allows fora clean OS?

ricko

Interesting piece.... and no information on the designer/where-who stuck? Cheers, RickO

keets

whoa, Zoins, some grammatical errors from you which is uncharacteristic. up early and no coffee yet?? BTW, nice medal which probably had only a few struck.

--- Spanish 4 escudo.
Weight: 13.5 g.
Diameter: 30 mm

the two known medals weigh approx. 243 and 202 grains each which roughly translate to 15.75 and 13.1 grams. a diameter would help, but it seems that this medal may have been overstruck on a lightly circulated 4 escudo, though I doubt the other one would have been due to the weight. given the practices of those bygone days it seems odd that if someone made the planchets there would be such a variance in weight.

I suspect they probably used some kind of host coin(s).