Leading the bidding at $66,000 during Stack’s Bowers Galleries’ Nov. 21 offering of the E Pluribus Unum Collection was an 1841 John Tyler Indian peace medal.

The medal was graded Very Fine by the auctioneer and pierced at the top for suspension, with the hole “positioned exactly as seen on each of the few confirmed genuine specimens.”

It is one of three or four known silver examples of the 75.2-millimeter “First Size” medal. The cataloger commented, “It is believed that 60 large-size medals were produced, but a significant percentage of all silver Tylers were returned to the mint, undistributed, and melted.”

This piece is hand-engraved in the obverse field: TECUMSEH-JONES / CHIEF at left, 1866 at the top, and OTTAWA KANS. / INDIAN TRIBE at the right. The engraving may have occurred after the medal was worn.

Stack’s Bowers concluded, “While the backstory of the medal is uncertain, the inscription was cut into the obverse less than 25 years after it was struck, so it was probably not too far removed from its original owner, whoever that may have been.”

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