1884 James G. Blaine Campaign Medal DeWitt JGB 1884-14 Copper

An 1884 campaign medalet for James G. Blaine, struck in copper at 28 mm, cataloged as DeWitt JGB 1884-14. Copper took a sharper strike than white metal and aged better, settling to a deep brown rather than going dull gray. Campaign pieces in copper were struck in smaller numbers than their white metal counterparts, and they are what most collectors of the series would rather own. Blaine's run produced more campaign metal than any candidate before him. His committees, and the private makers who supplied them, turned out medalets in white metal, copper, brass, nickel and gilt off the same dies, so the DeWitt numbers for 1884 run deep enough that a collector can spend years inside the single year. 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.