Franklin Mint Historic Silverseals Of The States Of The Union

I'm a big fan of Franklin Mint silver medals and coins. The designs and quality of workmanship deserve praise even though the sets rarely hold any value over melt anymore. I often buy entire series at estate sales. I'll hold the coins or medals for a few years, then sell them off to the smelters to raise funds for my next set! I always hate to see them go, but like I said, these sets just don't have much value over melt anymore. I've tried and tried again to find new homes for these but no luck.

So here is my latest set ready for the smelter with great regret! But before they go I'm posting a bit of info for future collectors' reference:

"Franklin Mint Historic Silverseals of the States of the Union"

This is a 50-piece set of sterling silver medals, each depicting a historic version of a state's official seal. Each medal has a frosted relief over a mirror-like field on the obverse. The reverse, which is not meant to be displayed, is simply the negative relief of the obverse. Each medal is housed in a clear plastic blisterpack and the blisterpack is then glued between a thin sheet of cardboard and a parchment sheet. The parchment sheet includes pretty pictures and a description of the state and its historic seal. The pages are inserted two at a time (back to back) into plastic pages and the pages are stored in a custom album. Twenty-five pages each holding 2 medals for a total of 50.

You'll see a few of the albums or pages on ebay every now and then. The problem is that sellers don't like to remove the medals from the pages so it was hard to gauge the exact dimensions of each medal and its silver content.

So, as I wrote, I tried to find a collector who wanted this set for its artistic and historic value but found no takers. So I cracked open the pages, loosed the medals from their blisterpacks, and measured them. Here's what I found:

Shape: 48 round, 2 oval

Weight: ~10.5 to ~11 grams or ~0.35 ozt each

Diameter: 1.5"

Thickness: 1/16"

Silver purity: 0.925 sterling

ASW: 0.31 - 0.33 ozt each

Many Franklin Mint medals are stamped on the edge with the metal content and purity (ie: Sterling 0.925), but these are too thin, thus no such markings. And there is some varity to the thickness, thus the minor variation in weight to each medal. The thickness is not apparent when the medals are in the original pages, but when stacked the slight variations add up. Oh, overall, my set weighs 535 grams or 17.2 ozt.

Note: these are the historic state seals, not necessarily the state's current seal. For example, the Massachusetts seal (one of only two oval seals) in this set was used in the 17th century and not since 1692. In other words, collectors might not recognize the seals. BTW, the official name of this series uses the one-word term "Silverseals" probably so they could trademark the term! Anyway, this set should not be confused with any other state seals that the Franklin Mint produced. I had another set of state seal medals from the Franklin Mint. Those were thicker and heavier and depicted current state seals.

Overall, this is a beautiful set, and the frosted relief over mirror-like finishes is absolutely stunning. Only a couple of my medals have any tarnish, even then they remain very attractive. I wish I had time to photograph and post each medal here, but I just can't. I hope others can contribute to this thread over time.

Anyway, that's all I know about this series. I hope the dimensions and weight I published here help future collectors determine the value of their sets. Here are a few pics for reference. My favorite is the medals stacked up. Silver stacker will know what I mean