A Continuing Thread ~ Post Your Tokens, Medals, Exonumia Acquisitions

I got this from a junk tray quite recently:



A forerunner of the London Eye, the Earls Court Wheel was erected in 1895 and dismantled 11 years later. These 32mm bronze medallions were issued for each year that the wheel was in existence.

I really like medals with contemporary historical references

Here are a couple tokens that I picked up this Summer in Luxembourg:






Walking around The Casements is pretty cool if you are ever in the neighborhood.

Looks very nice!

Neat! All new news to me.

Nice medal Spence, I admire that you traveled so far for that medal!

I picked up four "Buffalo Bill Cody Days" medals or So-called Dollars in one day from the same seller.





The first "Buffalo Bill Days" festival was held in 1969, and was organized primarily to raise funds to build Buffalo Bill Cody Park and celebrate one of Leavenworth's most famous figures. The Buffalo Bill State Park Committee envisioned a re-launch of the Pioneer Days festival from the late 1930s as a new event celebrating the area's colorful history.
That first festival was a five-day affair, featuring riverboat rides, the crowning of a "Buffalo Gal," a quick-draw demonstration, a concert by the Leavenworth High School band, and a parade.
Chief William Red Fox, an elderly Ogalala Sioux, was a headliner who told the story of being hired off the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation by Buffalo Bill to tour with the Wild West show in the 1890s.



In 1893, Colonel William Frederick Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, visited Pine Ridge Reservation to recruit Native Americans as performers in his "Wild West Show" and asked Chief Red Fox to join the troupe of performers who were about to make an appearance at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.
Buffalo Bill also asked Chief Red Fox to serve as a translator and "have charge" of the Native Americans that were in the show. Red Fox agreed and worked for Buffalo Bill for many years. In 1905, Chief Red Fox "scalped" King Edward VII in a stagecoach robbery scene in a Wild West show performance in London.

While people might think of Buffalo Bill as a killer of buffalo, which he certainly was, Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show is credited for being instrumental in saving the buffalo from extinction. Over a thirty year period of time, staged buffalo hunts portrayed in the shows using real buffalo romanticized the wild west. Spectators, who also came to number in the millions, had never even seen a buffalo.

The North American species of bison once roamed the western plains in massive herds, reportedly numbering anywhere from 30 to 100 million. But the American bison nearly became extinct in the 19th century.
The greatest loss actually took place between 1870 and 1883 and by 1900 fewer than 1,000 remained.

When the Leavenworth Buffalo Bill State Park Committee was planning annual Buffalo Bill Cody Days back in the 1970s, the establishment of a buffalo herd in Leavenworth became a reality.

Out of the series of 50 Statehood Medallic Art Co medals, these two seem to get a lot of attention and are hard to find. I found a seller breaking up a complete set and was first in line, passing up duplicates of others I already have that I knew were underpriced.
( These images will be updated and improved at some point )


1964 Ty Cobb - Georgia Statehood Medallic Art Co. Bronze Medal


Tyrus Raymond Cobb Dec 18, 1886 - July 17, 1961
He was nicknamed The Georgia Peach, and was an American Major League Baseball outfielder.
He was born in rural Narrows, Georgia.
Cobb spent 22 seasons with the Detroit Tigers, the last six as the team's player-manager, and finished his career with the Philadelphia Athletics.
In 1936 Cobb received the most votes of any player on the inaugural Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, receiving 222 out of a possible 226 votes. No other player received a higher percentage of votes until Tom Seaver in 1992.
In 1999, editors at the Sporting News ranked Ty Cobb third on their list of "Baseball's 100 Greatest Players".
Ty Cobb had a temper and was a fighter both on and off the field, even challenged umpire Billy Evans and arranged to settle their in-game differences through fisticuffs under the grandstand after the game. Members of both teams were spectators, and broke up the scuffle after Cobb had knocked Evans down, pinned him and began choking him.

Batting average .367
Hits 4,191
Home runs 117
Runs batted in 1,938
Stolen bases 892

On September 11, 1985, Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb's all-time hits record with his 4,192nd hit, a single to left-center field off San Diego Padres pitcher Eric Show.
Rose was a switch hitter and is the all-time MLB leader in hits 4,256.

On August 8, 1905, Cobb's mother fatally shot his father with a pistol that his father had purchased for her.
Court records indicate that Mr. Cobb had suspected his wife of infidelity and was sneaking past his own bedroom window to catch her in the act. She saw the silhouette of what she presumed to be an intruder and, acting in self-defense, shot and killed her husband.
Mrs. Cobb was charged with murder and then released on a $7,000 recognizance bond.
She was acquitted on March 31, 1906.
Cobb later attributed his ferocious play to his late father, saying, "I did it for my father. He never got to see me play... but I knew he was watching me, and I never let him down."



1969 King Kamehameha - Hawaii Statehood Medallic Art Co. Bronze Medal


Kamehameha was also known as Kamehameha the Great, he was the founder and first ruler of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
He had between 20 and 30 wives and had over 30 children.

A great warrior, diplomat and leader, King Kamehameha united the Hawaiian Islands into one royal kingdom in 1810 after years of conflict. Kamehameha was destined for greatness from birth. Hawaiian legend prophesized that a light in the sky with feathers like a bird would signal the birth of a great chief. Historians believe Kamehameha was born in 1758, the year Halley's comet passed over Hawaii.

Given the birth name Paiea, the future king was hidden from warring clans in secluded Waipio Valley after birth. After the death threat passed, Paiea came out of hiding and was renamed Kamehameha (The Lonely One). Kamehameha was trained as a warrior and his legendary strength was proven when he overturned the Naha Stone, which reportedly weighed between 2.5 and 3.5 tons. You can still see the Naha Stone today in Hilo.

During this time, warfare between chiefs throughout the islands was widespread. In 1778, Captain James Cook arrived in Hawaii, dovetailing with Kamehameha's ambitions. With the help of western weapons and advisors, Kamehameha won fierce battles at lao Valley in Maui and the Nuuanu Pali on Oahu. The fortress-like Puukohola Heiau on the island of Hawaii was built in 1790 prophesizing Kamehameha's conquest of the islands.
In 1810, when King Kaumualii of Kauai agreed to become a tributary kingdom under Kamehameha, that prophecy was finally fulfilled.

Kamehameha's unification of Hawaii was significant not only because it was an incredible feat, but also because under separate rule, the Islands may have been torn apart by competing western interests. Today, four commissioned statues stand to honor King Kamehameha's memory. Every June 11th, on Kamehameha Day, each of these statues are ceremoniously draped with flower lei to celebrate Hawaii's greatest king.
He died in 1819.



I think it is nice that I now have the first King of the Kingdom of Hawaii here to go with a medal that I posted about here of Queen Liliuokalani, the last ruler of The Kingdom of Hawaii.

http://goccf.com/t/301479&whichpage=41#2717712

And I got this seldom seen
1974 Amelia Earhart National Commemorative Society Medal.
But I have exhausted myself posting new info on her as I have collected more than a few Amelias already in this thread.

This is number 125 from a unique set, in that the subject for each medal was chosen by members of the National Commemorative Society and a medal for that subject was then designed and minted by the Franklin Mint.
This concept was later used for individual issues, but none on the scale of this set. It is also one of the longest running sets in Franklin Mint history - medals were issued one per month for over 12 years. Partial sets are more common; complete sets are rare. Some are commonly available while others, such as this command a premium and are not seen but a few times a year for sale.

Comes packaged as such.