Historical and Art Medals, Numismatic Books

19th Century, George IV, 1823, a copper medal signed I.S., armoured, draped and laureate bust right, rev. Victory seated on globe bearing the Hanoverian horse, among military trophies and other objects, her right arm holding a laurel wreath and raised triumphantly, 129.57g (BHM 1204; cf. BDW 9, 586). From slightly rusted dies as apparently they all are, extremely fine and extremely rare (£100-200)

One of the rarest of all the medals of George IV; only the second specimen seen by the cataloguer. Lawrence Brown records it on the basis of the only specimen known to to him, that in the Ashmolean Museum, formerly in the collection of Col. M.H. Grant, perhaps the foremost collector of nineteenth century medals in the pre-War period. The Latin inscription on the reverse (“to the best and most mighty of kings”) suggests that the medal may be associated with a royal visit or some other state occasion (possibly the cancelled visit to Southampton – see BHM 1205), but because of the prominence of the Hanoverian horse it could have been intended to mark an anniversary of some kind