1884 Grover Cleveland Campaign Medal DeWitt GC 1884-2 Copper

An 1884 campaign medalet for Grover Cleveland, struck in copper at 35 mm, cataloged as DeWitt GC 1884-2. Copper strikings sit a step above the white metal pieces off the same dies. Fewer were made, and they survive better. Color carries the grade on a copper campaign piece much as it does on a large cent, and originality of surface is worth more than sharpness of strike. The Democrats ran Cleveland in 1884 with Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana and won the closest presidential election of the century. The national margin was under a point. In New York it was 1,047 votes out of more than a million cast, and New York decided it. 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.