ROBERT AITKEN’S DESIGN for the 1915 Panama-PacificInternational Exposition medal, issued in a variety ofmetals and finishes, was adapted for a badge (left)produced for the American Numismatic Association’s convention that year in San Francisco.

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MEDALS BY JEFF SHEVLIN & WILLIAM D. HYDER LM 5659 & ANA 1059458

o l l ecto rs dismayedover the U.S. Mint’s recent marketing strate-gies, with scores of coinsin different finishes,

might be surprised to learn thepractice is deeply rooted in his-tory. Farran Zerbe, ANA pastpresident (1905-07) and editorof The Numismatist (1909-10),helped create the proceduresthat led to some of the excessesin the Mint’s commemorativecoin program.

Zerbe was director of theCoin and Medal Department atthe 1915 Panama-Pacific Inter-national Exposition (PPIE) inSan Francisco, hired as a tem-porary contract employee to sell official medalsand U.S. commemorative coins struck for theevent. He helped found the Pacific Coast Numis-matic Society in San Francisco and arranged to

have it host the ANA’s annualconvention in that city dur-ing the Exposition. Together,Zerbe and the club selected thePPIE official medal as the basisfor the ANA convention badge.

The Official MedalRoger Burdette’s Renaissance ofAmerican Coinage, 1909-1915cites a wealth of original docu-ments regarding 20th-centuryAmerican coins and medals.His discussion of the concep-tion and design of the officialPPIE medal added depth toour appreciation of the story.

PPIE representatives pro-posed design ideas to the U.S.

Mint in late March 1914 and inquired about thecost of dies and medals, with the latter to bestruck at the Exposition. Chief Engraver CharlesBarber responded within a week, stating that the

FARRAN ZERBE, THE MINT &THE 1915 PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION MEDAL

To mark the historic fair in San Francisco—and to bolster sales—official commems were struck in various compositions and finishes.

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committee’s submitted designs would not lendthemselves to the low relief necessary to producean inexpensive souvenir. Instead, he suggested illustrating a government building and the shieldof the United States, noting that similar medalswere popular at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Fortunately for today’s collectors, Barber’s ad-vice was ignored, and the U.S. Commission ofFine Arts recommended soliciting a number ofprominent artists to submit designs for the Expo-sition medal and the commemorative coins in-tended to celebrate the event. Sculptor RobertAitken began working on a design in September1914, hoping to secure the medal commissionwithout having to compete against other artists;his designs and plaster model were accepted forproduction at the end of November.

With so little time to complete work on themedal (not to mention that the authorizing legis-lation had not yet passed Congress), Aitken re-quested that Medallic Art Company make thehubs directly from his plasters. He understoodBarber’s approach to coins and medals, and hehoped to avoid “the sharp definition of outlinewhich is usual and desirable in ingots intended forcirculation as money.” Clearly, Aitken feared whatBarber might do to his design.

For the obverse, Aitken chose a representationof Mercury holding open the doors of a canal lockto allow passage of the Argo, symbolic of navi -gation. The reflection of the setting sun indicatesthe vessel’s westward journey. “On! Sail On!”—adapted from Joaquin Miller’s popular poem“Columbus”—suggests the uninterrupted voy-age made possible by the Panama Canal. On the

reverse, two entwined females representing theNorthern and Southern Hemispheres embrace theEarth and hold cornucopias to suggest the unitedwealth of the world. The seagull flying below sym-bolizes the Canal Zone.

Aitken’s design reflected the low-relief style favored by many medalists of the period. Ele-ments flow into the field, with few sharp edges.The Exposition medal invites handling, and turning the piece in the light reveals the subtlebeauty of its design. However, not everyone ap-preciated Aitken’s efforts, and some have sug-gested that is why the commemorative medal isrelatively scarce, despite that nearly 20 millionpeople attended the Exposition.

Frank Todd, writing in the official PPIE his-tory, The Story of the Exposition, observed that

beautiful and expressive as the design was, it hadan unfortunate and unforeseen defect, from thecommercial point of view. The artist had pre-sented Mercury just as that pilfering messengerused to flit about among the gods on Olympus,looking ready for his bath, so that many well-conducted persons, not sufficiently inured to themanners of Olympian deities, hesitated to buythe medals for home use.

Burdette’s research, on the other hand, revealsthat Mint officials placed the blame on Zerbe’smarketing strategies.

Farran Zerbe & the MintFarran Zerbe secured his employment as directorof the Exposition’s Coin and Medal Departmentdespite the Mint’s efforts to award a sales con-tract to a competing firm. Charles S. Muir &Company of Washington, D.C., was prepared topay for concessionaire rights and all materials

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! THE EXPOSITION WELCOMED 18 million visitors through itsgates between February 20 and December 4, 1915.

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and to share the profits fromsales. However, the Expositioncompany chose Zerbe, swayedperhaps by his involvement withthe sales of U.S. commemorativegold dollars at ex positions in St.Louis in 1904 and Portland in1904 and 1905, and by his prom-ise to display his “World ofMoney” exhibit in San Francisco.

Congress did not pass the authorizing legislation for thecommemorative coins and medalsuntil January 1915, less than amonth before the scheduled Exposition opening.Since Aitken’s medal had been prepared outsidethe Mint, it was the only product available forZerbe to sell when the fair opened on February 20.The Mint delivered silver medals and gold-platedmed als on February 19 and began producingbronze pieces in the Mint exhibit when the Expo-sition opened. Frank Todd mentions that thebronze medals with a “fancy finish” were offeredfor 25 cents each.

Medal Production & IdentificationEach day at its exhibit, the U.S. Mint demon-strated the steps in the coining process, frommelting the crude bullion, molding raw ingots, androlling and milling the strips from which blankswere stamped, to upsetting, cleaning and dryingthe blanks before striking them on two coiningpresses. Security concerns made it unwise to coinactual money, so only bronze medals were struckon the premises. The silver and gold-plated speci-mens were produced by the U.S. Mint in Philadel-phia and provided to Zerbe for sale. After theirstriking at the Exhibition, official bronze medalspassed through automatic reviewing and weighingmachines as if they were actual coins.

Although not specifically mentioned in the literature we reviewed, Mint staff finished themedals with different chemical dips and processesto impart one of four patinas. Perhaps it was thisprocedure that necessitated the installation ofcoin dryers in the exhibit. The annual Mint Re-port noted that a sandblasting machine, neededto prepare the struck medals for dipping, wasmanu factured for the demonstration.

Knowing that we were researching the officialmedals, exonumia dealer Mike Sanders excitedlycalled our attention to Zerbe’s 1915 advertisement

offering the U.S. Panama-Pacificcommemorative silver half dollar,gold $1 and $21⁄2, and both theround and octagonal gold $50coins (as a complete set for $200,or one of your choice for $100).The ad also referenced sales of

the medals in silver, gold-plated bronze, statuarybronze, bright bronze, antiqued bronze and oxi-dized bronze.

Collectors and grading firms recognize threedifferent varieties: silver, bronze and gilt bronze.The fact is, only the silver variety is correctly at-tributed. The gilt actually is gold plate, andbronze medals should be attributed by the fourfinishes listed in the advertisement. Our challengewas to figure out which was which. We realizedthat all mint-state bronze versions identified todate are really a conglomeration of four different,specially treated bronze medals, none of whichshould be identified as just plain “bronze.”

Bronze VarietiesIn an effort to distinguish the different varieties,we accumulated approximately 50 high-grade ex-amples. We sorted the medals by color and generalappearance, with a residual category for thosethat did not seem to fit into any one group. As weexpected, the uncirculated bronze medals fell intofour groups, while medals with a moderate degreeof wear generally fell into a fifth group that mostcollectors would readily identify as bronze.

After a good deal of debate, we believed wecould reliably identify the four patinas on uncir-culated medals. We then turned to numismaticpho tographer Todd Pollock to capture color images that other collectors could use to identifythe finishes.

In higher grades, the statuary bronze piecescan be distinguished by the reddish hues the fin-ish imparts to the fields and raised surfaces. Thebright bronze is analogous to what often is re-ferred to as “lightly gilded.” It is bright and almost amber/gold in color, but in no way resem-bles the heavily gold-plated medals, which have

Security concerns made it unwise to coin actual money, so only bronze medals were struck on the premises.

! FARRAN ZERBE (1871-1949) wasemployed temporarily as directorof the Exposition’s Coin and Medal Department. He may have silver-plated some bronze medals toboost his profits.

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A VISUAL GUIDE TO OFFICIAL PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION MEDALSby composition and/or finish

Silver Silver-Plated Bronze

White Metal Gold-Plated Bronze

Antiqued Bronze Oxidized Bronze

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the look of solid gold.The oxidized and antiqued versions are similar

to one another, both considerably darker than thestatuary and bright bronze varieties. The oxidizedmedals are darker overall in the fields and on thedevices. The antiqued pieces are dark in the pro-tected areas, an effect likely created by lightlywiping off the finish from the surface of the medal,but leaving it in the recesses. The photographs atthe left illustrate the four varieties of patinatedbronze medals, plus silver, silver-plated bronze,white-metal and gold-plated bronze issues forcomparison. It should be noted that the finish onmany worn medals cannot be identified reliably.

According to the Exposition’s audited financialreport, 45,494 bronze medals of “all finishes”were sold. If our sample is any indication of theactual distribution of finishes and compositions,then approximately 50 percent of the medals werebright bronze, 16 percent were oxidized bronze,10 percent were gold-plated, 10 percent were stat-uary bronze and 5 percent were antiqued bronze.As we will discuss, another 5 percent of unknownfinish were silver-plated. The table on the nextpage presents the range of weights and diametersobserved for each variety.

Silver MedalsThe authors were fascinated by the inordinatenumber of silver-plated bronze pieces in theirsample. The silver medals are known to have beensold at the Exposition, but the silver-platedbronze examples are not featured in the officialsales lists. Unless they show evidence of wear that reveals the underlying bronze, silver-platedmedals are visually indistinguishable from solidsilver examples. In our experience, about 5 to10 percent of the medals identified as silver are, infact, silver-plated. A worn medal will not foolmost collectors, but uncirculated pieces should beweighed to verify that they are, in fact, silver.About 5 percent of the total medal productionwas struck in silver, with a reported 2,620 sold.

Zerbe’s Marketing & SalesWe believe Farran Zerbe conceived the fourMint-produced bronze varieties as a marketingstrategy to sell more medals. We also speculatethat Zerbe silver-plated some bronze medals andsold them as silver. Since all the U.S. Mint medalswere sold exclusively by Zerbe at his personal exhibit, and the Mint staff was not permitted to

sell Mint products, the staff had little or no con-nection with Zerbe’s sales activities. Zerbe wouldhave generated an unrecorded profit of 75 centsfor each bronze medal he silver-plated.

Unsold coins and medals were to be returnedto the Mint for melting at the end of the Exhibi-tion. Zerbe, however, retained the products hehad on hand and continued to sell specimens atthe Palace of Fine Arts until May 1, 1916, and bymail order until November 1, 1916, when the re-maining stock was returned to the Mint and de-stroyed. He asked for the medal dies to display inhis “Money of the World” traveling exhibit, butMint officials refused his request, as they fearedhe might strike additional specimens.

The total number of medals of all types sold isrelatively low in comparison to the record 18 mil-lion Exposition visitors. This sales figure couldreflect the fact that fair-goers could buy the items

We believe Farran Zerbe conceived the four Mint-produced bronze varietiesas a marketing strategy to sell more medals.

! A 1915 ADVERTISEMENT described the varieties of Exposition medals that Farran Zerbe offered for sale.

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only at Zerbe’s exhibit or through the mail. SinceZerbe himself worked as an Exposition employeeuntil its gates closed on December 4, 1915, medalsales numbers had no direct effect on his personalincome. To supplement his earnings, he also soldhis own souvenirs at his exhibit.

Bronze and gold-plated medals sold for 25 cents,or 50 cents with a loop. Silver medals were $1.Bronze examples cost the Exposition approxi-mately 1 cent each; gold-plated, 5 cents; and silver, approximately 53 cents. Mint personnelwere upset when Zerbe refused to discount pricesfor bulk sales. The Mint struck 18,000 bronzemedals a week, and Zerbe sold about 1,000 aweek. The overstock had to be stored and eventu-ally was melted to keep the exhibit in operation.

The Mint staff believed Zerbe was selling 120silver medals a week, although the final sales fig-ures were less than half that. At the end of theExposition, he did sell 10,000 bronze medals for10 cents each to departing exhibitors. Given thefinal sales numbers, the weekly sales of bronzemedals likewise were far less than the Mintthought. If Zerbe silver-plated bronze medals, the75 cents he pocketed for each one significantlysupplemented his income.

Another theory proposes that others platedbronze medals after the Exposition to profit fromsales to collectors. While this is a possibility, itdoes not explain why many of the plated medalsexhibit wear, which leads us to believe they arecontemporaneous with the Exposition. If theywere plated to deceive collectors, we would not

see as many worn pieces.Cast, white-metal copies of the official PPIE

medal have been observed. While not well knownto most collectors, they have been on the marketfor quite some time. (The firm of Johnson &Jensen, for example, noted reports of a white-metal variety in its 1978 “So-Called Dollars”price supplement.)

ConclusionsWe noted the practice of describing the three offi-cial 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposi-tion medals as “silver,” “gilt” and “bronze” in recent auction catalogs. NGC, ANACS and ICGcurrently encapsulate the medals using thesethree designations. However, as we have shown,uncirculated medals should be identified bytheir composition and finish: silver, silver-plated,gold-plated, bright bronze, oxidized bronze, statuary bronze and antiqued bronze. Since grad-ing companies do not include the weight of thesemedals on their labels, it is likely that some mint-state silver-plated medals are encapsulated as silver, since their existence has not been previ-ously documented.

Many ANA members are familiar with FarranZerbe’s loose adherence to ethical business prac-tices. One need only recall the battle betweenZerbe and Thomas Elder over the former’s pro-motion of lightweight gold tokens at the St. Louisand Portland expositions to increase his profits.Did he pull a similar stunt in 1915, or are the silver-plated medals contemporary counterfeitsproduced by others? All things considered, wesuspect Zerbe’s involvement. !

SourcesAnnual Report of the Director of the Mint for

the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1915. Washington,DC: 1915.

Burdette, Roger W. Renaissance of AmericanCoinage, 1909-1915. Great Falls, VA: Seneca MillsPress, 2007. (ANA Library Catalog No. GA40.B7r V.2)

Darrell, Frank L. “Final Financial Report.”San Francisco: Panama-Pacific International Ex-position Company, 1921.

Hibler, Harold E., and Charles V. Kappen. So-Called Dollars: An Illustrated Standard Catalog,2nd ed. Clifton, NJ: The Coin and Currency Insti-tute, 2008. (RM30.H5 2008)

Jensen, Chris E., H. Joseph Levine and HankG. Spangenberger. “Current Valuations: A PriceSupplement to So-Called Dollars.” Danbury, CT:Johnson & Jensen, 1978. (RM30.H5 Supp.)

Todd, Frank Morton. The Story of the Ex po -sition, Vol. 4. New York: G.F. Putnam’s Sons,1921. (RM85.P3T6)

SPECIFICATIONSO!cial Panama-Pacific Exhibition MedalsCOMPOSITIONAND/OR FINISH WEIGHT (g) DIAMETER (mm)

Silver 30.11 38.25Silver-Plated Bronze 25.49 to 25.57 38.26 to 38.27

White Metal 17.65 37.45

Gold-Plated Bronze 25.61 to 25.91 38.31 to 38.38with and withoutsuspension loops*

Bright Bronze 25.41 to 25.88 38.14 to 38.31(one at 27.36)

Statuary Bronze 25.55 to 25.61 38.19 to 38.28Antiqued Bronze 25.57 38.29Oxidized Bronze 25.46 to 25.63 38.15 to 38.28

(one at 27.14)

* All varieties have been observed with and without suspension loops;however, the majority of specimens with loops are gold-plated.