1884 Grover Cleveland Campaign Medal DeWitt GC 1884-20 Brass

An 1884 campaign medalet for Grover Cleveland, struck in brass and cataloged as DeWitt GC 1884-20. Brass was the practical choice for a piece meant to be worn through a campaign season. It takes a sharp strike, it does not bend the way white metal does, and it tones down to a warm color rather than corroding. Cleveland's 1884 ticket, with Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana for vice president, broke a Republican run on the presidency that went back to Lincoln. Hendricks did not see much of the term he won: he died at home in Indianapolis that November, less than nine months after the inauguration. 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.