ANA Membership Medals
As a medal collector I like complete groups. As a collector of long service and retirement medals I have learned that medals are a good reflection of the kind of respect that an organization has for it's members or employees.
My father-in-law Courtney L. Coffing, was a member of the American Numismatic Association for over sixty years. He joined in 1948 and attended his first
ANA convention wearing his Marine Corps uniform. In 1972 he was awarded his silver twenty-five year medal. The medal is 24mm in diameter and weighs 8.89grams with a specific gravity of 10.39 indicating that it is sterling even though it is not marked as such. The reverse is engraved with his name,
ANA number and award year. Interestingly the inside of the engraved letters and numbers looks golden brown. For his 40th membership year in 1987 he received a small 13mm octagonal lapel pin with a silver finish. I can't remember ever seeing him wearing it. I am sure that he found the hinged pin simply too small and too hard to pin on a suit jacket lapel. In 1997 he earned his fifty year medal which is a respectable 10k gold medal, 25.5mm in diameter and 12.35 grams in weight giving it .165 oz. pure gold content. There was some talk at the
ANA that year about no longer issuing gold fifty year medals to save money but to the
ANA's credit they continued to honor their fifty year members with real gold medals. Along with the fifty year medals a gold plated miniature lapel pin was also issued. In 2007 Courtney hit the sixty year membership mark and received another good looking gold plated lapel pin with a Liberty Head design based on the
Peace dollar. Sadly Courtney is no longer with us. It would have been interesting to see what the
ANA would have done for a seventy-five year member.
Posted 10/11/2018 10:14 pm
