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The Gallery Mint Museum Annual Medals were made for three years, from 1993 to 1995. They were made in pure silver and weighed 1.5 ounces. Heavy and thick, they are very impressive. The dies were hand engraved and exhibit themes relating to minting of coins and numismatics.
Original issue price for each was $35 plus $4.00 for shipping. Mintage for each year was limited to 500 pieces, so they are quite scarce and always command a significant premium whenever one comes up for sale.
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1993 ANNUAL MEDAL OBVERSE/REVERSE
1994 ANNUAL MEDAL OBVERSE/REVERSE
1995 ANNUAL MEDAL OBVERSE/REVERSE
The edges of these medals also had their own dies. In 1993, two different edge dies were used. The photos below show each one.
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Sometime in 1994, the guys at the Gallery Mint accidentally struck about 10 each of the medals pairing the obverses and the reverses of the 1993 and 1994 medals, creating some of the most prized of all the Annual Medal series.
These "mules" were distinguished from the regular issues by stamping serial number 000 on each one, as they are not part of the normal 500 piece run for each date.
The photos below show these pieces along with the 000 serial numbers on the edges.
There is a fairly informative article in the Gallery Mint Scrapbook that tells how these came about. Check it out.
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MULE - 1993/1994 OBVERSES
MULE - 1993/1994 REVERSES
This is an interesting piece, a 1993 Annual Medal struck in copper. The edge dies are similar to the early edge dies described above except instead of saying "999 SILVER", it says "ART HISTORY TECHNOLOGY". The folks at the Gallery Mint would regularly test strike dies on copper planchets and I believe this was such an experiment to see how these large dies would strike up on such a large planchet. Looks pretty good to me.
Being a test strike, I don't think this was ever intended to leave the Gallery Mint. Probably aren't a whole lot of these around.
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In 2001, the Guys struck a custom piece using a 1995 Annual Medal to start, then struck their 2001 Hobo Nickel into it. This piece shows the result. The 1995 Medal was originally made with a depiction of a Hobo Nickel as the central design, but this one was actually struck again with a pair of Gallery Mint Hobo Nickel dies on top of that. Cool!
I don't know exactly how many of these were made, but I do know there is only a tiny handful, and the
Gallery Mint Museum Scrapbook actually shows one overstruck with a different Gallery Mint Hobo Nickel dated 2000.
By the way, this one is numbered 475 of 500. Kind of hard to conceive of anyone defacing one of these rare original pieces of art, but this overstrike just seems like it belongs there.
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EMAIL ME if you have any questions/comments.
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