By Jeff Starck for COIN WORLD

When it comes to collecting medals and their cousins, medallions and medalets, size really is everything.

Medal collecting is an area where exacting terminology identifies the items. Knowing that what distinguishes the types of medals from each other is their size is necessary to engage in knowledgeable collecting.

Medals are usually pieces of metal, marked with a design or inscription, made to honor a person, place or event.

Medals are not intended to circulate as money. Medals may not be considered tokens, which have a stated or implied value (being “good for” a certain amount or a service, such as a bus fare) and are used as money substitutes.

A medal’s intended purpose is what makes it different from a coin or token, writes D. Wayne Johnson at a Frequently Asked Questions portion of the Medal Collectors of America Web site www.medalcollectors.org/Questions/index.html.

The U. S. Mint’s American Eagle gold bullion coin program debuted in 1986, and this called for the creation of several new collar sizes for the four-piece line-up. There was bound to be some trial and error as a result, yet the number of mint error coins actually escaping careful inspection at the mints has remained extremely small for the American Eagle series.

This amazing gold one-ounce coin dated MCMLXXXVI (1986) is just such an error, a coin struck almost entirely out of the collar. In fact, just a trace of the collar’s reeding is visible along the reverse rim. Both sides reveal tripled images of all peripheral elements, as a consequence of the coin’s unrestrained expansion between strikes.

The Parthian Empire is a period of Persian history connected to both Greece and Rome. Ruling from 247 BC to 228 AD in ancient Persia, the Parthian defeated Alexander the Great successors, the Seleucids, conquered most of the Middle East and southwest Asia and built Parthia into the Eastern superpower. The use of the bow as a weapon made the Parthian an effective military force. Their silver coins had portraits of various rulers.

Greek coins describe coins of Mediterranean city-states and kingdoms before the Roman Empire, Celtic tribes and Indo-Greek kingdoms, most bearing Greek legends though other languages appear. There are many opportunities for specialization. Some collectors focus on artistic interest. The collection of Calouste Gulbenkian is an outstanding example of the artistic appeal of the finest coins of ancient Greece. Leonidas at Thermopylae other collectors specialize in issues of a single city. Catalogues of specialized collections, such as the Tarentine collection of Michel Vlasto, often become valued standard references. There are also topical collection themes such as ships, birds, horses etc. Many collectors begin by seeking to acquire one nice example of the coinage of each city, such as Athenian owls. (more…)