Lest They Own You

by Samuel Pennington

Compared to other examples of sculpture, medals are so inexpensive—many fine examples can be bought for $100 or less—that enthusiastic new collectors will accumulate a large quantity in a short time.

Medals dealer Paul Bosco said people ask him about medals, "‘What do you DO with them?’ I tell them, you OWN them."

Fair enough, but ownership brings responsibility, and unless you address the subjects of this column—storage, display, and cataloging—the medals in your collection will own YOU.

—Cataloging

By my definition, three or more of anything is a collection. So once you reach that point, or before, start cataloging. Start with all the information from the seller, and then follow this checklist modified from one written by D. Wayne Johnson. (You may read his whole article on cataloging at http://www.medalcollectors.org/pdf/the%20mca%20advisory%20may%202005.pdf. If that address is too long and complicated, go to www.medal collectors.org, click on "Archives and Back Issues," then download The MCA Advisory from May 2005.) I keep my catalog as a Word document. You could also use a database, a spreadsheet, or one of the many programs written for collectors.

1) Working catalog number. (Set up some sort of system. The simplest is just to number them chronologically as you acquire them. This number is the key to all the information. You can apply it to photographs and other pieces of information.)

2) Name and date.

3) Size (and shape if not round). Size is generally given in millimeters.

4) Composition and patina. (Bronze, silver, copper, white metal, etc. Patina is the finish applied to the metal.)

5) Artists: designer, engraver, sculptor (specify which).

6) Obverse description. (The obverse is the front side of the medal.)

7) Reverse description.

8) Signed (how, where).

9) Edge marks, type of edge.

10) Issuer. (Society of Medalists, U.S. Mint, Franklin Mint, etc.)

11) Public collections or citations. (Is your medal included in a public collection such as the Marqusee collection at Cornell University, or is it referenced in a publication? Medals produced by the U.S. Mint carry a Julian number from the book Medals of the United States Mint: The First Century 1792-1892 by R.W. Julian, reprinted and updated in 1977 by the Token and Medal Society.)

12) Source and cost.

13) Photograph. (Where is your digital photograph stored? What is its title? If you are keeping the catalog in Microsoft Word, you can also include a copy in your document.)

14) Comments. (This is where you put what you have learned about the medal, what attracted you to it, or any other information. You may wish to keep this information in a separate document referenced by that all-important catalog number.)

—Commercial Cataloging

If devising your own checklist is too much, there are commercial programs available. One is Collectorpro. See the Web site (www.collectorpro.com) for details. A free trial version may be downloaded from the Web site.

—Photographing Medals

Digital photography has made photographing your collection far easier than in the old film and darkroom days. A computer, some photo editing software, a $300 camera, a copy stand, and, optionally, a $200 color inkjet printer are all you need. You can even get by without a camera if you have access to a scanner.

The main requirement for a camera is some sort of close-up capability. I’m using an Olympus SP-500 UZ, which has 6 megapixels and a 10x optical zoom. The optical zoom means you can get a ten-times-bigger image. Don’t confuse optical zoom with digital zoom. The digital zoom just makes a bigger screen image but does not add to the information captured. Olympus has just come out with a camera with 18x optical zoom for about $400. It should be worth the extra $100.

A copy stand will allow you to get a precise and shake-free picture of your medal. Some newer cameras come with image stabilization, but pictures taken with image stabilization alone are nowhere near as clear as those taken with a stand. Copy stands run from $25 for ones without lights to $200 and more. I bought mine complete with lights and blue bulbs on eBay for $41 plus $19 shipping.

I use a piece of red velvet for a background, but just about any color will do. The cloth makes sure there are no background reflections. Lights are less necessary with a digital camera—I do much of my photography on a table in front of a window. Direct sunlight can be tricky, so I draw translucent curtains to avoid direct glare.

Shoot your pictures at as high a resolution as the camera will deliver. When editing, remember that for computer screen display, 72 dots per inch (DPI) is standard, but for book or article printing, you will want 200 or 300 DPI.

Most cameras come with some minimal photo editing software. In case yours didn’t, there is a new Web-based editing program (www.picnik.com). It’s free for now. You upload your picture to the site, edit it, and then download the edited picture. You need a fast connection. Sounds complicated, but it works.

If you don’t have a camera, medals can be scanned on a flatbed scanner. The results are a little flatter than with a camera.

My copy stand came from eBay for $41 plus $19 shipping, which is about what it sold for back in the dark old days of film photography.

The same medal scanned on a flatbed office scanner (left), photographed with a digital camera on a copy stand with single light source (center), and on a copy stand with two lights (right). The scanned version is much flatter. The two-light version is slightly flatter. The medal is Donald De Lue's Brookgreen Gardens membership medal for the year 1979.

—Storage and Display

Storage and display go together. When he bought a number of over-$20,000 Indian peace medals at a Stack’s auction, Philadelphia print dealer W. Graham Arader III sneered at collectors of medals. "Collectors keep them [medals] in drawers. I will frame them, and they will hang on the wall next to McKenney and Halls and Catlins [prints of Indian chiefs wearing the peace medals]."

That sort of treatment is fine for one or two expensive medals, but it won’t work for 30, 40, or 100 medals, and you cannot just leave the medals lying around, so drawers remain a prime solution.

While there are lots of solutions for coin collectors, there are so few medal collectors that there are few commercial makers of medals cabinets. One of those is Richard Mole, who runs Richard’s Cabinets and Woodworking in Carriere, Mississippi. You may reach him at (601) 213-0439, or see the Web site (www.richardscabinets.com).

Mole’s basic cabinet is Model 700, with nine drawers, 11" wide x 9" deep x 1" high inside, overall 15" wide x 12" deep x 14¾" high. It costs $770 (or $675 without the doors). He can make it in mahogany, cherry, or walnut. For storing 3" Society of Medalist medals he recommends slightly larger drawers at $75 more. This would hold 12 medals per drawer, or 108 medals for the nine drawers.

For his wall cabinet that holds 70 3" diameter medals (seven rows of ten), Mole charges $550. The medals sit in a groove and lean against a padded back covered in green felt set at a slight angle. For $1750 he will supply the same wall cabinet with lighting—441 lighting elements that are dimmer controlled and add no appreciable heat.

I’m sure there are other cabinetmakers who could make such devices.

Not nearly as satisfactory are some hardwood utility chests made in China that I purchased for $69 apiece by mail from Handsome Rewards in California. Call (951) 943-2023 or (800) 522-0227 for ordering information. The chests are stackable, and the four drawers each hold ten medals, or 40 per chest. I bought three before I heard of Richard’s Cabinets and Woodworking.

Another solution was a glass-topped coffee table we owned. I made a sliding drawer under the glass, lined the drawer with red velvet and, voila! A place for 84 three inch medals. For my collection of ashtray medals, which range from 3 to 8 inches in diameter, I rigged a wall shelf out of simple molding.

I’m sure there are other solutions out there. If you have them, please e-mail us at <mad@maineantiquedigest.com>.