Coins We Love: What's In Your Collection?
During the coin show lull of March, we’ve been trying to simply catch up with things we missed in the office over the past month or so. This includes figuring a few uncertified coin collections, sorting purchases from the recent shows, and submitting some ungraded coins to the grading services so we can offer them in our future sales. Things keep humming along, and whether it’s imaging, shipping, programming, or coin sorting, the DLRC team is certainly at work trying to move coins along and improve the experience for customers! That being said, showing our photography process or our Developers writing code that doesn’t make sense to most of us also doesn’t make for a great written message.
So, it may be a one-off, but we often hear the question, “What do you collect?” This week I’m giving an answer! In honor of MLB’s Opening Day, I wanted to share something that was a birthday gift to me from Wes this past year. It sure beat getting another tie that I don’t regularly wear!
What’s In Our Collection?
This coin was a gift to add to my collection of silver rounds featuring professional baseball players. While most featured folks from the 20th Century, there’s one coin that added an additional century of flavor to my collection.
Baseball wasn’t always the major business conglomerate that it is now. There was a time when it was an escape from the world around soldiers, and this coin represents that. Originally, the dies for these tokens were cut and designed by John Adams Bolen in 1861, being the first commissioned work as a die-sinker during his long career. Even though this was the first, it is looked at by numismatic scholars as a contender for the magnum opus of his career. According to Bolen’s Journal, which is now preserved by the American Numismatic Society in New York, the medal was commissioned by Charles E. Vinton, a hotel clerk in Springfield, Massachusetts and a supporter of the Pioneer Baseball Club, for the club's third anniversary. The medals are only known in 2 metal compositions, the rarer of the two being copper, and the more common example being white metal with a reported mintage of just 150 pieces.
The obverse of the medal displays a baseball player, at bat and dressed in rather tattered clothing and a cap, with a baseball flying toward him. The initials of John Adams Bolen are present below. Underneath the signature of Mr. Bolen, 13 stars are present, representing the first 13 Colonies of America, possibly put there to resemble the 13 stars present on most United States-issued coinage at the time. The legend around the rims reads “PIONEER BASE BALL CLUB."
The reverse of the medal is a more simplistic design with the top legend reading “ORGANIZED APRIL 30.1858.” Towards the center of the coin, the other legend reads “PLAY GROUND ON HAMDEN PARK SPRINGFIELD," which was a field used for multiple sporting events, such as bicycle competitions, as well as a neutral site for college sporting events. The park was also known as Pynchon Park or League Park and is most famously known for being used for recreational baseball games as well as early professional games. It was here in 1869 that the Cincinnati Red Stockings, now known as the Atlanta Braves, played against the Springfield Mutuals, where Cincinnati won 80-5 during the season of their 65-0 record. Later on, this park was used as a place for multiple minor league teams and the field moved several times. Back to the medal at hand, a design can be seen of 2 baseball bats lying down intersecting and 3 baseballs surrounding it. Lastly, a legend reads "MASS", short for the state of Massachusetts.
The location of the founding of baseball has long been debated, as there are multiple circulating stories regarding who takes credit, but this coin tells a story that might just add a little more to the historical record. And with the tie-in to my beloved Braves, I think that this coin has found a wonderful long-term caregiver!
Numismatically Yours,
John Brush
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