By Jeff Starck for COIN WORLD

When trying to determine value of medals, many factors should be considered, which can sometimes overwhelm new collectors.

Medals are a very broad field, and condition and rarity, generally the keys to coin prices, are just among the first of several factors to consider with medals.

“The field of medals is so broad that it’s tough to talk about it as a monolith,” according to John Kraljevich, an expert in coins and exonumia. “Renaissance portrait pieces and ’so-called dollars’ have nearly nothing in common though both fall under the grand rubric of ‘medals’ – so it’s easy for a beginner to get overwhelmed within such a massive field.”

Coin World asked several experts to weigh in on what factors affect medal prices and how valuing medals is different than pricing coins.

Collecting by topic

Because the field of medal collecting is so broad, collectors like to categorize and collect by topic.

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By Cindy Brake for COIN WORLD

Detecting zinc-coated steel planchet imposters requires magnet, good eye

Distinguishing the elusive 1943 Lincoln copper cent from an imposter requires a magnet and a good eye.

In 1943 the cent was struck on a zinc-coated steel planchet rather than the usual 95 percent copper planchet. The United States was involved in World War II and copper was needed for the war effort.

The 77th Congress authorized the wartime cent with Public Law 815. The metal content of the cent changed from 95 percent copper and 5 percent tin and zinc to a low grade carbon steel base with a .005-inch thick zinc coating that was deposited electrolytically as a rust preventative.

No one knows for sure how, but a few – some speculate about two dozen – copper planchets were mixed in with the zinc-coated steel planchets and were struck with 1943 dies. The authentic 1943 Lincoln copper cents are highly prized.

In the 1940s rumors began about a genuine 1943 Lincoln copper cent struck in error. The first pieces were authenticated by acknowledged experts in the late 1950s.

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By Eric Von Klinger for COIN WORLD

A high mintage does not always ensure that a coin is common, nor do low mintages necessarily equate with high prices.

Although they tend to learn these truisms early, today’s collectors might be astounded to find that standard catalogs relegated mintage figures to appendices until well into the latter part of the 20th century. The figures were generally ignored until Wayte Raymond’s Standard Catalog of United States Coins first appeared in the 1930s; the book copied U.S. Mint tables, which expressed amounts in dollar and cent totals rather than number of coins. A Guide Book of United States Coins (the “Red Book”) similarly partitioned mintages from valuations until the 1960s. Read Full Story