1884 Grover Cleveland Campaign Medal DeWitt GC 1884-9 Copper

An 1884 campaign medalet for Grover Cleveland, struck in copper and cataloged as DeWitt GC 1884-9. The obverse carries the bust of S. Grover Cleveland. The reverse shows a columned public building above the single word REFORM, the plank Cleveland ran on after a career made as a reform mayor of Buffalo and a reform governor of New York. Copper strikings of a campaign issue were the smaller run. White metal was made to be handed out, copper was made to be kept, and a century later that difference shows in both the survival rate and the price. The catalog carries the white metal GC 1884-9 as well, which makes this a rare chance to set the same dies side by side in two metals. 1884 was the first of Cleveland's three consecutive runs for the presidency. He won it by a hair, lost the electoral college in 1888 while outpolling Benjamin Harrison nationally, and took the office back in 1892. 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.