Undated (ca. 1872) Andrew Jackson / The Stern Old Soldier medal. By J.A. Bolen. Silver. Thin Planchet. Musante JAB-27. MS-63 (PCGS). 25.4 mm. 10 grams. Lovely pale green, blue and russet mottled over deep steel gray surfaces. Prooflike, but hairlined. Struck on a thin planchet, which is markedly different from the very thick planchets occasionally seen and believed to represent those medals struck by Bolen directly. The thinner flans are though to be restrikes by J.W. Kline to whom Bolen sold the dies in 1872. However, Musante does not attribute any in silver to Kline, so these are probably very rare. The two main institutional collections of Bolen medals are at the ANS and MHS, and neither has an example in silver. This one has a fine provenance. From the F.C.C. Boyd Collection; our (B&R) sale of the New York Public Library Collection, October 1982, lot 2741; our (B&M) sale of the Mann & Smedley Collections, October 1988, lot 1988, our (B&M) sale of the Smith and Youngman Collections, March 2003, lot 3441; Q. David Bowers Collection; our sale of January 2011, lot 6623.
