1888 Grover Cleveland Campaign Medal DeWitt GC 1888-7 Brass Sullivan Plate Piece

An 1888 campaign medalet for Grover Cleveland, struck in brass at 25 mm, cataloged as DeWitt GC 1888-7, and recorded as the plate piece for that number. Plate piece means this is the example that sat for the catalog photograph. Edmund B. Sullivan's American Political Badges and Medalets, 1789-1892, the 1981 revision and enlargement of DeWitt's own 1959 book, illustrated its listings from specimens, and the pieces chosen for those illustrations carry a distinction of their own: what the standard reference shows for GC 1888-7 is this piece. 1888 was the middle of Cleveland's three runs and the one he lost. He took more votes than Benjamin Harrison nationally and fewer where they counted, losing his own New York and with it the electoral college, 233 to 168. He came back four years later and won. 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 is the source of the numbering used here. That a piece from his cabinet is also the illustrated specimen for its number is the kind of overlap this collection produces. Graded Mint State in hand. Offered raw, without certification.