1884 Grover Cleveland Campaign Medal DeWitt GC 1884-11 White Metal

An 1884 campaign medalet for Grover Cleveland, struck in white metal at 28 mm, cataloged as DeWitt GC 1884-11. White metal, the tin and lead alloy also sold as britannia, was the workhorse of the campaign medalet trade. It was cheap, and off fresh dies it struck up bright enough to pass for silver at a distance, which is why more surviving pieces from any given canvass are white metal than anything else. It is also soft, so full luster and clean rims are far scarcer than the numbers struck would imply. Grover Cleveland went from mayor of Buffalo to governor of New York to president of the United States in a little over four years, carried the whole way by a reputation for saying no to his own party's favor seekers. In 1884 he took New York by 1,047 votes and became the first Democrat elected president since James Buchanan in 1856. Ex J. Doyle DeWitt. DeWitt built the reference collection of American political material, some seventy thousand pieces, while rising from claims investigator to president of the Travelers Insurance Company, and his 1959 catalog A Century of Campaign Buttons is the source of the numbering used here. Edmund B. Sullivan revised and enlarged it in 1981. Graded Mint State in hand. Offered raw, without certification.