Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) — A collection of war medals that includes nine Victoria Cross medals, stolen from a New Zealand army museum more than two months ago, was recovered after police offered a reward for their return.

The medals were returned in good condition, New Zealand Police said in a statement e-mailed Feb. 16. The offer of a NZ$300,000 reward ($237,000) last month, the largest incentive ever posted in New Zealand, was instrumental in the medal’s return and a sum of money has been paid, the police said.

The 96 medals were stolen from an annex of the Waiouru Army Museum on New Zealand’s North Island on Dec. 2. They included a Victoria Cross and Bar awarded to Charles Upham, New Zealand’s most decorated soldier, as well as two George Medals and one Albert medal. The Victoria Cross is the highest military honor awarded to soldiers serving in the U.K. and in former British Empire countries.

The reward “encouraged a person to come forward and facilitate the return of the medals to police,” said Detective Senior Sergeant Chris Bensemann, head of the task force investigating the theft. “New Zealand Police celebrate the return of these national treasures.” Read Full Story

Love tokens are generally defined as coins where one side (or sometimes both sides) has been smoothed down and engraved with initials, names, phrases and/or scenes. These were often given to young ladies as “tokens of love” by suitors.

The manufacture and practice of giving “Love Tokens” seems to have originated in Great Britain in the early 1800’s, and then migrated to the United States in the mid- to late-1800’s.

The Liberty Seated dime is perhaps the most popular used to create love tokens, perhaps because of its smaller size and silver content, but love tokens are known to have been made from all denominations of U. S. coins from half cents through twenty-dollar gold pieces as well as numerous world coins and denominations.

Love Token enthusiasts have formed appropriately enough “The Love Token Society”. It is an international organization and can be found on the web at http://www.lovetokensociety.org

The standard reference work on love tokens is
“Love Tokens as Engraved Coins” by Lloyd L. Entenmann, privately published, 1991. You may have to search a bit to find a copy but they are available.

Coin World also published an article on Love Tokens a few years back. Read Article here 

John Graham Pollard, numismatist, museum curator and civic campaigner died on 17 December 2007.

Graham Pollard was the leading authority on Italian Renaissance medals in the post-war period. He will be best remembered as the author of the multi-volume catalogues of two of the greatest collections in the world, those of the Bargello Museum in Florence and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. But as a curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge – whose coin and medal collection he did much to enhance – his influence was far wider, as he shared his knowledge and judgement with students, scholars, collectors and dealers. Read Full Obituary

Washington, DC — The most important public collection of Renaissance-era medals in the United States resides at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and is the focus of a new publication, Renaissance Medals.

The first comprehensive catalogue of this collection is available as a two-volume set covering 957 medals acquired through 2003. Of these, 163 are currently on view at the National Gallery of Art in the West Building ground floor sculpture galleries.

The catalogue, compiled over more than twenty years, offers the most detailed art historical and scientific assessment of the collection available to date, including technical information such as the alloy composition of each medal. Volume one features Italian medals, including dozens of masterworks by Pisanello, who essentially invented the medium of portrait medals. Volume two focuses on French, German, Netherlandish, and English medals, including works by Guillaume Dupré, Albrecht Dürer, and Jacques Jonghelinck, and continues through the Baroque and later periods. (more…)

The American Numismatic Society announced today that it has, through private treaty, acquired a large collection of legal medals, tokens and coins that had been gathered by the late Prof. Guido Kisch (1889-1985).

The stunning examples of more than 1000 objects focuses on law and the legal profession collected over more than half a century and depicts subjects such as emblems and badges of the law, institutions and personalities related to the law, legal history, education, legislation, prison, emancipation, with objects ranging in date from the 16th to mid-20th centuries.

Prof. Guido Kisch was Professor of Jurisprudence and the History of Law at the Universities of Koenigsberg, Prague and Halle before emigrating to the United States in 1935. He continued his academic career in New York until after the Second World War when he returned to Basel, Switzerland. He wrote prolifically on the subjects of humanism and jurisprudence; parts of his collection were discussed and illustrated in “Recht und Gerechtigkeit in der Medaillenkunst” which was published in 1995 in Heidelberg.

The Society has been expanding its holdings in an ongoing effort to strengthen its outstanding collections and to ensure that the collections are well maintained for the study and enjoyment of current and future generations of collectors and researchers. The ANS collection of medals, both foreign and U.S. has grown to over 100,000 objects. Many of the objects are available on line, and the ANS is trying to improve in this area. (more…)