Indian Peace Medal - Post-1904 John Adams, J-IP-unlisted AE 76mm NGC MS64BN

Here’s an attractive John Adams Indian Peace Medal (IPM) to add to your collection. There were no John Adams IPMs struck during his presidency in silver, so this bronze issue is the only one available to numismatists. NGC as graded one as MS64 with one finer.

Creation of the John Adams Indian Peace Medal

During the 1840s, the Mint began producing restrikes of the Indian Peace Medals in bronze. There was some concern that there were no dies to strike IPMs of John Adams, for the absence of his medals made the series incomplete. Franklin Peale, who had become Chief Coiner in 1839, worked to have an Indian Peace Medal produced with the image of John Adams. Peale wrote in 1841, "There is an obverse die, engraved by Fürst with the Portrait of John Adams...It is a good likeness and otherwise a good work of art, probably the only one in existence and is very desirable to complete the series of Presidential [Indian Peace] medals."

Official Presidential portrait of John Adams. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

The Mint director, Robert M. Patterson, wrote to John C. Spencer, Secretary of the Treasury, "I am glad your attention has been turned to the circumstances that, in the series of Presidential medals...those of [John Adams] are wanting." James Porter, Secretary of War, wrote to Patterson on May 23, 1843, "by which you will see that it is supposed [that a die of] the elder Adams can be executed...'without much expense,' " and asked for an estimate of the cost. Patterson responded that the cost of the obverse would be about $300 and to make a reverse die from the pattern in use would be $50.

The original die of John Adams by Fürst was nowhere to be found. However, it was included in a Joseph J. Mickley coin sale of November, 1878. The Mint Director, Henry Linderman, purchased the die from the Mickley estate. It was early in December of 1878 that bronze medals struck with the Fürst die were sent to the Mint Director in Washington. From that time onward, bronze James Adams medals were sold regularly at the Mint. The die was for the small medal (51 mm), and the extant medals have the second reverse that features the "Peace and Friendship" slogan, the clasped hands, and the crossed peace pipe and tomahawk.

Beginning around 1900 at the Mint, the bronze IPMs were all produced in the large 76 mm size. Therefore new dies were needed for the John Adams medal. They were made in 1904 or 1905, and the obverse dies was an enlarged reproduction of the small Fürst die. This offering from AUCM is struck from the dies made in 1904 or 1905.