1884 Grover Cleveland Perpetual Calendar Campaign Medal DeWitt GC 1884-7 Nickel

An 1884 Democratic campaign medal for Grover Cleveland and Thomas A. Hendricks, struck in nickel at about 29 mm and cataloged as DeWitt GC 1884-7. The candidate and his running mate carry the design, and the center of the piece works: a rotating perpetual calendar is built into it. Campaign material was disposable by nature, handed out at a rally and thrown in a drawer by December. A piece that told you the day of the week stayed in use, which is exactly why it was made this way and why so few of them survive with the mechanism intact. Cleveland and Hendricks beat the Republican ticket of James G. Blaine and John A. Logan in one of the closest elections of the century. Cleveland was the first Democrat elected president since before the Civil War.