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ROBERT AITKEN’S DESIGN for the 1915 Panama-PacificInternational
Exposition medal, issued in a variety ofmetals and finishes, was
adapted for a badge (left)produced for the American Numismatic
Association’s convention that year in San Francisco.
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MEDALS BY JEFF SHEVLIN & WILLIAM D. HYDER LM 5659 & ANA
1059458
o l l ecto rs dismayedover the U.S. Mint’s recent marketing
strate-gies, with scores of coinsin different finishes,
might be surprised to learn thepractice is deeply rooted in
his-tory. Farran Zerbe, ANA pastpresident (1905-07) and editorof
The Numismatist (1909-10),helped create the proceduresthat led to
some of the excessesin the Mint’s commemorativecoin program.
Zerbe was director of theCoin and Medal Department atthe 1915
Panama-Pacific Inter-national Exposition (PPIE) inSan Francisco,
hired as a tem-porary contract employee to sell official medalsand
U.S. commemorative coins struck for theevent. He helped found the
Pacific Coast Numis-matic Society in San Francisco and arranged
to
have it host the ANA’s annualconvention in that city dur-ing the
Exposition. Together,Zerbe and the club selected thePPIE official
medal as the basisfor the ANA convention badge.
The Official MedalRoger Burdette’s Renaissance ofAmerican
Coinage, 1909-1915cites a wealth of original docu-ments regarding
20th-centuryAmerican coins and medals.His discussion of the
concep-tion and design of the officialPPIE medal added depth toour
appreciation of the story.
PPIE representatives pro-posed design ideas to the U.S.
Mint in late March 1914 and inquired about thecost of dies and
medals, with the latter to bestruck at the Exposition. Chief
Engraver CharlesBarber responded within a week, stating that
the
FARRAN ZERBE, THE MINT &THE 1915 PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION
MEDAL
To mark the historic fair in San Francisco—and to bolster
sales—official commems were struck in various compositions and
finishes.
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36 The NUMISMATIST | www.money.org A U G U S T 2 0 1 2
committee’s submitted designs would not lendthemselves to the
low relief necessary to producean inexpensive souvenir. Instead, he
suggested illustrating a government building and the shieldof the
United States, noting that similar medalswere popular at the 1893
World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Fortunately for today’s collectors, Barber’s ad-vice was
ignored, and the U.S. Commission ofFine Arts recommended soliciting
a number ofprominent artists to submit designs for the Expo-sition
medal and the commemorative coins in-tended to celebrate the event.
Sculptor RobertAitken began working on a design in September1914,
hoping to secure the medal commissionwithout having to compete
against other artists;his designs and plaster model were accepted
forproduction at the end of November.
With so little time to complete work on themedal (not to mention
that the authorizing legis-lation had not yet passed Congress),
Aitken re-quested that Medallic Art Company make thehubs directly
from his plasters. He understoodBarber’s approach to coins and
medals, and hehoped to avoid “the sharp definition of outlinewhich
is usual and desirable in ingots intended forcirculation as money.”
Clearly, Aitken feared whatBarber might do to his design.
For the obverse, Aitken chose a representationof Mercury holding
open the doors of a canal lockto allow passage of the Argo,
symbolic of navi -gation. The reflection of the setting sun
indicatesthe vessel’s westward journey. “On! Sail On!”—adapted from
Joaquin Miller’s popular poem“Columbus”—suggests the uninterrupted
voy-age made possible by the Panama Canal. On the
reverse, two entwined females representing theNorthern and
Southern Hemispheres embrace theEarth and hold cornucopias to
suggest the unitedwealth of the world. The seagull flying below
sym-bolizes the Canal Zone.
Aitken’s design reflected the low-relief style favored by many
medalists of the period. Ele-ments flow into the field, with few
sharp edges.The Exposition medal invites handling, and turning the
piece in the light reveals the subtlebeauty of its design. However,
not everyone ap-preciated Aitken’s efforts, and some have
sug-gested that is why the commemorative medal isrelatively scarce,
despite that nearly 20 millionpeople attended the Exposition.
Frank Todd, writing in the official PPIE his-tory, The Story of
the Exposition, observed that
beautiful and expressive as the design was, it hadan unfortunate
and unforeseen defect, from thecommercial point of view. The artist
had pre-sented Mercury just as that pilfering messengerused to flit
about among the gods on Olympus,looking ready for his bath, so that
many well-conducted persons, not sufficiently inured to themanners
of Olympian deities, hesitated to buythe medals for home use.
Burdette’s research, on the other hand, revealsthat Mint
officials placed the blame on Zerbe’smarketing strategies.
Farran Zerbe & the MintFarran Zerbe secured his employment
as directorof the Exposition’s Coin and Medal Departmentdespite the
Mint’s efforts to award a sales con-tract to a competing firm.
Charles S. Muir &Company of Washington, D.C., was prepared
topay for concessionaire rights and all materials
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! THE EXPOSITION WELCOMED 18 million visitors through itsgates
between February 20 and December 4, 1915.
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37www.money.org | The NUMISMATISTA U G U S T 2 0 1 2
and to share the profits fromsales. However, the
Expositioncompany chose Zerbe, swayedperhaps by his involvement
withthe sales of U.S. commemorativegold dollars at ex positions in
St.Louis in 1904 and Portland in1904 and 1905, and by his prom-ise
to display his “World ofMoney” exhibit in San Francisco.
Congress did not pass the authorizing legislation for
thecommemorative coins and medalsuntil January 1915, less than
amonth before the scheduled Exposition opening.Since Aitken’s medal
had been prepared outsidethe Mint, it was the only product
available forZerbe to sell when the fair opened on February 20.The
Mint delivered silver medals and gold-platedmed als on February 19
and began producingbronze pieces in the Mint exhibit when the
Expo-sition opened. Frank Todd mentions that thebronze medals with
a “fancy finish” were offeredfor 25 cents each.
Medal Production & IdentificationEach day at its exhibit,
the U.S. Mint demon-strated the steps in the coining process,
frommelting the crude bullion, molding raw ingots, androlling and
milling the strips from which blankswere stamped, to upsetting,
cleaning and dryingthe blanks before striking them on two
coiningpresses. Security concerns made it unwise to coinactual
money, so only bronze medals were struckon the premises. The silver
and gold-plated speci-mens were produced by the U.S. Mint in
Philadel-phia and provided to Zerbe for sale. After theirstriking
at the Exhibition, official bronze medalspassed through automatic
reviewing and weighingmachines as if they were actual coins.
Although not specifically mentioned in the literature we
reviewed, Mint staff finished themedals with different chemical
dips and processesto impart one of four patinas. Perhaps it was
thisprocedure that necessitated the installation ofcoin dryers in
the exhibit. The annual Mint Re-port noted that a sandblasting
machine, neededto prepare the struck medals for dipping, wasmanu
factured for the demonstration.
Knowing that we were researching the officialmedals, exonumia
dealer Mike Sanders excitedlycalled our attention to Zerbe’s 1915
advertisement
offering the U.S. Panama-Pacificcommemorative silver half
dollar,gold $1 and $21⁄2, and both theround and octagonal gold
$50coins (as a complete set for $200,or one of your choice for
$100).The ad also referenced sales of
the medals in silver, gold-plated bronze, statuarybronze, bright
bronze, antiqued bronze and oxi-dized bronze.
Collectors and grading firms recognize threedifferent varieties:
silver, bronze and gilt bronze.The fact is, only the silver variety
is correctly at-tributed. The gilt actually is gold plate,
andbronze medals should be attributed by the fourfinishes listed in
the advertisement. Our challengewas to figure out which was which.
We realizedthat all mint-state bronze versions identified todate
are really a conglomeration of four different,specially treated
bronze medals, none of whichshould be identified as just plain
“bronze.”
Bronze VarietiesIn an effort to distinguish the different
varieties,we accumulated approximately 50 high-grade ex-amples. We
sorted the medals by color and generalappearance, with a residual
category for thosethat did not seem to fit into any one group. As
weexpected, the uncirculated bronze medals fell intofour groups,
while medals with a moderate degreeof wear generally fell into a
fifth group that mostcollectors would readily identify as
bronze.
After a good deal of debate, we believed wecould reliably
identify the four patinas on uncir-culated medals. We then turned
to numismaticpho tographer Todd Pollock to capture color images
that other collectors could use to identifythe finishes.
In higher grades, the statuary bronze piecescan be distinguished
by the reddish hues the fin-ish imparts to the fields and raised
surfaces. Thebright bronze is analogous to what often is re-ferred
to as “lightly gilded.” It is bright and almost amber/gold in
color, but in no way resem-bles the heavily gold-plated medals,
which have
Security concerns made it unwise to coin actual money, so only
bronze medals were struck on the premises.
! FARRAN ZERBE (1871-1949) wasemployed temporarily as directorof
the Exposition’s Coin and Medal Department. He may have
silver-plated some bronze medals toboost his profits.
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A VISUAL GUIDE TO OFFICIAL PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION MEDALSby
composition and/or finish
Silver Silver-Plated Bronze
White Metal Gold-Plated Bronze
Antiqued Bronze Oxidized Bronze
Bright Bronze Statuary BronzeP
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the look of solid gold.The oxidized and antiqued versions are
similar
to one another, both considerably darker than thestatuary and
bright bronze varieties. The oxidizedmedals are darker overall in
the fields and on thedevices. The antiqued pieces are dark in the
pro-tected areas, an effect likely created by lightlywiping off the
finish from the surface of the medal,but leaving it in the
recesses. The photographs atthe left illustrate the four varieties
of patinatedbronze medals, plus silver, silver-plated
bronze,white-metal and gold-plated bronze issues forcomparison. It
should be noted that the finish onmany worn medals cannot be
identified reliably.
According to the Exposition’s audited financialreport, 45,494
bronze medals of “all finishes”were sold. If our sample is any
indication of theactual distribution of finishes and
compositions,then approximately 50 percent of the medals werebright
bronze, 16 percent were oxidized bronze,10 percent were
gold-plated, 10 percent were stat-uary bronze and 5 percent were
antiqued bronze.As we will discuss, another 5 percent of
unknownfinish were silver-plated. The table on the nextpage
presents the range of weights and diametersobserved for each
variety.
Silver MedalsThe authors were fascinated by the inordinatenumber
of silver-plated bronze pieces in theirsample. The silver medals
are known to have beensold at the Exposition, but the
silver-platedbronze examples are not featured in the officialsales
lists. Unless they show evidence of wear that reveals the
underlying bronze, silver-platedmedals are visually
indistinguishable from solidsilver examples. In our experience,
about 5 to10 percent of the medals identified as silver are,
infact, silver-plated. A worn medal will not foolmost collectors,
but uncirculated pieces should beweighed to verify that they are,
in fact, silver.About 5 percent of the total medal productionwas
struck in silver, with a reported 2,620 sold.
Zerbe’s Marketing & SalesWe believe Farran Zerbe conceived
the fourMint-produced bronze varieties as a marketingstrategy to
sell more medals. We also speculatethat Zerbe silver-plated some
bronze medals andsold them as silver. Since all the U.S. Mint
medalswere sold exclusively by Zerbe at his personal exhibit, and
the Mint staff was not permitted to
sell Mint products, the staff had little or no con-nection with
Zerbe’s sales activities. Zerbe wouldhave generated an unrecorded
profit of 75 centsfor each bronze medal he silver-plated.
Unsold coins and medals were to be returnedto the Mint for
melting at the end of the Exhibi-tion. Zerbe, however, retained the
products hehad on hand and continued to sell specimens atthe Palace
of Fine Arts until May 1, 1916, and bymail order until November 1,
1916, when the re-maining stock was returned to the Mint and
de-stroyed. He asked for the medal dies to display inhis “Money of
the World” traveling exhibit, butMint officials refused his
request, as they fearedhe might strike additional specimens.
The total number of medals of all types sold isrelatively low in
comparison to the record 18 mil-lion Exposition visitors. This
sales figure couldreflect the fact that fair-goers could buy the
items
We believe Farran Zerbe conceived the four Mint-produced bronze
varietiesas a marketing strategy to sell more medals.
! A 1915 ADVERTISEMENT described the varieties of Exposition
medals that Farran Zerbe offered for sale.
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only at Zerbe’s exhibit or through the mail. SinceZerbe himself
worked as an Exposition employeeuntil its gates closed on December
4, 1915, medalsales numbers had no direct effect on his
personalincome. To supplement his earnings, he also soldhis own
souvenirs at his exhibit.
Bronze and gold-plated medals sold for 25 cents,or 50 cents with
a loop. Silver medals were $1.Bronze examples cost the Exposition
approxi-mately 1 cent each; gold-plated, 5 cents; and silver,
approximately 53 cents. Mint personnelwere upset when Zerbe refused
to discount pricesfor bulk sales. The Mint struck 18,000
bronzemedals a week, and Zerbe sold about 1,000 aweek. The
overstock had to be stored and eventu-ally was melted to keep the
exhibit in operation.
The Mint staff believed Zerbe was selling 120silver medals a
week, although the final sales fig-ures were less than half that.
At the end of theExposition, he did sell 10,000 bronze medals for10
cents each to departing exhibitors. Given thefinal sales numbers,
the weekly sales of bronzemedals likewise were far less than the
Mintthought. If Zerbe silver-plated bronze medals, the75 cents he
pocketed for each one significantlysupplemented his income.
Another theory proposes that others platedbronze medals after
the Exposition to profit fromsales to collectors. While this is a
possibility, itdoes not explain why many of the plated
medalsexhibit wear, which leads us to believe they
arecontemporaneous with the Exposition. If theywere plated to
deceive collectors, we would not
see as many worn pieces.Cast, white-metal copies of the official
PPIE
medal have been observed. While not well knownto most
collectors, they have been on the marketfor quite some time. (The
firm of Johnson &Jensen, for example, noted reports of a
white-metal variety in its 1978 “So-Called Dollars”price
supplement.)
ConclusionsWe noted the practice of describing the three
offi-cial 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposi-tion medals as
“silver,” “gilt” and “bronze” in recent auction catalogs. NGC,
ANACS and ICGcurrently encapsulate the medals using thesethree
designations. However, as we have shown,uncirculated medals should
be identified bytheir composition and finish: silver,
silver-plated,gold-plated, bright bronze, oxidized bronze, statuary
bronze and antiqued bronze. Since grad-ing companies do not include
the weight of thesemedals on their labels, it is likely that some
mint-state silver-plated medals are encapsulated as silver, since
their existence has not been previ-ously documented.
Many ANA members are familiar with FarranZerbe’s loose adherence
to ethical business prac-tices. One need only recall the battle
betweenZerbe and Thomas Elder over the former’s pro-motion of
lightweight gold tokens at the St. Louisand Portland expositions to
increase his profits.Did he pull a similar stunt in 1915, or are
the silver-plated medals contemporary counterfeitsproduced by
others? All things considered, wesuspect Zerbe’s involvement. !
SourcesAnnual Report of the Director of the Mint for
the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1915. Washington,DC: 1915.
Burdette, Roger W. Renaissance of AmericanCoinage, 1909-1915.
Great Falls, VA: Seneca MillsPress, 2007. (ANA Library Catalog No.
GA40.B7r V.2)
Darrell, Frank L. “Final Financial Report.”San Francisco:
Panama-Pacific International Ex-position Company, 1921.
Hibler, Harold E., and Charles V. Kappen. So-Called Dollars: An
Illustrated Standard Catalog,2nd ed. Clifton, NJ: The Coin and
Currency Insti-tute, 2008. (RM30.H5 2008)
Jensen, Chris E., H. Joseph Levine and HankG. Spangenberger.
“Current Valuations: A PriceSupplement to So-Called Dollars.”
Danbury, CT:Johnson & Jensen, 1978. (RM30.H5 Supp.)
Todd, Frank Morton. The Story of the Ex po -sition, Vol. 4. New
York: G.F. Putnam’s Sons,1921. (RM85.P3T6)
SPECIFICATIONSO!cial Panama-Pacific Exhibition
MedalsCOMPOSITIONAND/OR FINISH WEIGHT (g) DIAMETER (mm)
Silver 30.11 38.25Silver-Plated Bronze 25.49 to 25.57 38.26 to
38.27
White Metal 17.65 37.45
Gold-Plated Bronze 25.61 to 25.91 38.31 to 38.38with and
withoutsuspension loops*
Bright Bronze 25.41 to 25.88 38.14 to 38.31(one at 27.36)
Statuary Bronze 25.55 to 25.61 38.19 to 38.28Antiqued Bronze
25.57 38.29Oxidized Bronze 25.46 to 25.63 38.15 to 38.28
(one at 27.14)
* All varieties have been observed with and without suspension
loops;however, the majority of specimens with loops are
gold-plated.