Stack’s Bowers Galleries offered what it called the finest group of medalets related to Charles Willson Peale’s museums ever assembled at its Aug. 15 session. Peale was part of a family of artists, and his museums — which eventually included locations in New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore — combined art, natural history and fossils. The Peale collection would eventually be sold to promoter P.T. Barnum in the 1840s.

Researcher Len Augsburger consigned the group, sharing, “This was a fun collection to put together. Sometimes it’s more about being patient and digging around over a period of time, as years can easily pass between certain offerings.”

Peale’s Philadelphia museum was housed in Independence Hall starting in 1802, and the offered tokens were struck at the Philadelphia Mint, featuring a portrait by Christian Gobrecht of Peale in his capacity of museum founder. The Philadelphia museum was incorporated in 1821, though the offered 1821-dated medals were first struck in 1833, and Peale died in 1827.

Charles Peale painted himself in his museum, opening the curtain to reveal its treasures to visitors, in a well-known 1822 canvas now housed in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. The museum calls the picture part advertisement, part philosophical statement, writing, “Peale’s museum offered a cabinet of curiosities to instruct and entertain the spectators, from the wild turkey at the lower left, to the skeleton of the mastodon he had exhumed and brought to Philadelphia at the right. Cages in the background display natural history specimens, while above them portraits of American worthies celebrate the heroes of the new country.” Augsburger added, “The Philadelphia Museum is a story in itself, and owning related objects has a way of making one curious about how they came to be.”

Presented to Patterson

At $4,080, an 1821-dated presentation Peale’s Museum token, struck in silver and engraved to U.S. Mint Director Robert Maskell Patterson, now graded Mint State 62 by Numismatic Guaranty Co., led bidding. A review of the minutes of the Museum’s board of trustees show resolutions authorizing the striking of 12 silver medals and one in gold. Patterson became Mint director in May 1835 and this piece descended in the family until 2012.

Beyond the silver impression offered, examples were struck in gilt bronze, bronze and white metal, and the offering had examples of each. Its gilt bronze example, graded MS-61 by NGC, had an engraved 1 on the reverse – consistent with at least 14 bronze medals that are individually numbered from 1 to 53. An 1836 entry in the Philadelphia Museum’s minutes provides for, “150 medals to be struck similar to the example presented at the last meeting at a cost not to exceed 60 cents each, to serve as admission tickets for annual and life subscribers.” The cataloger observed, “As a numbered Philadelphia Museum token, this is an important rarity, but it seems likely from the notation in the Philadelphia Museum minutes that this #1 engraved piece was likely the original concept pattern for this design,” and it sold for $2,040.

More affordable were examples struck in bronze and white metal. The collection’s bronze one was graded MS-63 red and brown by NGC and featured the number 27 engraved on the reverse. One struck in white metal and graded AU Details, Bent by NGC sold for just $600, and was likely a die trial struck in tin. Describing the NGC modifier, the cataloger noted, “A diagonal dig within the empty reverse wreath has distended the center a bit, but the eye appeal is excellent and the detail is very sharp,” and when offered in 2009 where it sold for $3,450, it was described as, “unpublished in white metal and an exciting discovery.”

The collection presented two admittance tokens: a Peale’s Philadelphia Museum pass that admits the bearer, graded MS-63 brown by NGC that sold for $1,200 and a 1825 Peale’s Museum and Gallery of the Fine Arts, New York token that sold for $960. The latter is graded AU Details, Obverse Scratched by NGC and the tokens were used for entry to the New York gallery at 252 Broadway between 1825 and 1842. 

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