1939 Worlds Fair Palladium Dollar

ScarsdaleCoin

Almost a unicorn ….but this is truly a beauty and well worth waiting to find!

Estil

So even back then palladium was considered a precious metal?

ScarsdaleCoin

A little more back story. This was issued privately by Baker & Co which is actually owned by drum roll Engelhard.

Yes Palladium dates back to 1803 and was considered a very precious metal.

These medals were basically returned (worth more than the $24 paid at the fair) and then destroyed (melted) few remain and basically I only know of a few others out there!

1madman

I didn’t know these were made in palladium. I saw the platinum version available recently.

jesbroken

Here are the photos.
Jim

Treashunt

nice one, I never saw one before.

Maywood

I have considered this for it's scarcity and never seen one before. It's actually little more than an advertising token with a rather mundane design, the only reference to the fair being the bottom line on the obverse(PCGS managed to slab it reverse on the label side). Considering it was a major event in what was probably the world's largest city at the time there is a very small number of catalogued medals from the 1939 fair. Forgetting the "back story" how did you acquire this extremely rare medal??

Zoins

@Maywood said:
I have considered this for it's scarcity and never seen one before. It's actually little more than an advertising token with a rather mundane design, the only reference to the fair being the bottom line on the obverse(PCGS managed to slab it reverse on the label side).

I agree it has the appearance of an advertising token given that it has the company name prominently on it with the following text:

Baker & Co., Inc.--Precious Metal Refinery--Newark, N. J. U. S. A. / New York--Chicago--San Francisco--Toronto--London--Paris--Tokyo; below all Engelhard Industries

Here's one from @jonathanb on so-calleddollars.com.

What do you think @jonathanb? Is this correctly classified as a So-Called Dollar or is it more of an advertising token/medal?

Zoins

@Maywood said:
Considering it was a major event in what was probably the world's largest city at the time there is a very small number of catalogued medals from the 1939 fair.

This is probably due to cataloging rather than number of medals.

It seems there are a lot of the 1939 World's Fair medals in the 32mm range. Medals in this range are cataloged in Hibler and Kappen as So-Called Dollars for some events like the 1933 Century of Progress in Chicago but not other events like the 1939 New York World's Fair (yet).

https://www.so-calleddollars.com/Events/Century_of_Progress.html

Here's another thread listing all the 32mm pieces in Hibler & Kappen:

https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/1068442/hibler-and-kappen-so-called-half-dollars#latest

There probably just needs to be a 3rd edition adding more 32mm medals, or a separate catalog for Hibler & Kappen So-Called Half Dollars.

ricko

Interesting piece. I do not have any Palladium coins/medals/tokens.... Only have seen the metal in some experimental efforts by our research and development group back in the late nineties. Cheers, RickO

jonathanb

Hibler and Kappen were... casual... about their own rules for what qualifies as a so-called dollar. This one is definitely related to a world's fair and was listed in their 1963 book. If you want to say that it shouldn't have been listed, I won't argue. But it was listed so that's what we've got.

I think this one is the first/only one slabbed by NGC. I've seen at least two. I'd be surprised if there weren't at least 5-10 out there somewhere.

There is also a half ounce version and a larger version, I think 5 or maybe 10 ounces. An example of the larger version was sold in a Presidential auction about 20-30 years ago.