1884 James G. Blaine Campaign Medal DeWitt JGB 1884-24 Brass

An 1884 campaign medalet for James G. Blaine and John A. Logan, struck in brass at about 14 mm and cataloged as DeWitt JGB 1884-24. Fourteen millimeters is small even for a medalet. At that size a die cutter has room for a legend or a portrait but not both, and the piece was made to hang from a watch chain rather than to be pinned to a coat. The variety is scarce. PCGS records a single certified brass example, and NGC likewise shows one of the gilt. Blaine had wanted the Republican nomination since 1876 and finally took it in 1884, on the fourth ballot at Chicago. The party that gave it to him promptly split, and the campaign that followed was one of the most personal in American history. He carried eighteen states to Cleveland's twenty and lost. 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.