1642 (ca. 1827) Tristram Coffin Medal. Bronze. 54.23 mm. 78.2 grams. Betts-533, Storer-1892. Extremely Fine, Burnished.The edge with 7306 BC. 533 in black ink at 6 oclock. The detail is sharp enough to support a Choice About Uncirculated grade, but the surfaces are curiously glossy in texture with numerous marks scattered about in the fields. Pleasing copper brown patina throughout. This is a seldom encountered Betts medal that, by rights, should not be listed in his catalog at all -- the Betts editors correctly noted that the medal was "struck about the beginning of the present century" but chose to leave it in the book anyway. The original struck versions of this medal, as this, were produced circa 1827 by Thomas Halliday in England for distribution by Sir Isaac Coffin to students at a nautical school he founded on Nantucket, the ancestral homeland of the Coffins of North America. However, for generations afterwards, perhaps as late as the turn of the 20th century, cast versions were produced for Coffin family reunions on the island.
