PCGS grades, attributes, and encapsulates a wide variety of tokens and medals, including material by John Adams Bolen, a Massachusetts-based diesinker familiar to many U.S. token and medal collectors. Bolen’s body of work, which includes commemorative medals, copies of famous North American coins dating from the 17th century forward, store cards, and medals commemorating places and events around Springfield, Massachusetts. Produced from the Civil War era in the 1860s to the turn of the 20th century, Bolen’s tokens and medals have been popular with collectors since they were issued. PCGS began grading and encapsulating Bolen material partway through the last decade, and examples of much of Bolen’s output reside in PCGS holders.
Bolen was born in New York City in 1826, moving to Massachusetts as a teenager and settling in Springfield. He would spend the rest of his life in that city. He worked a range of jobs over his lifetime, though his engraving and die-sinking business was his most successful and that for which he is best known, at least in numismatic circles. Pete Smith’s American Numismatic Biographies says Bolen was a member of the Springfield Antiquarian Society and a corresponding member of the American Numismatic Archaeological Society.
Bolen took commissions from a range of clients and undertook some projects on his initiative, notably copies and reproductions of classic North American colonial coins. This effort capitalized on the mid-19th-century coin collecting boom in the United States, as Americans began to uncover their country’s numismatic history, and the well-heeled and well-connected snapped up prime examples. Bolen’s copies afforded those with shallower pockets or sparser numismatic networks the opportunity to own famous coins through faithful, well-made facsimiles, though these struck copies attracted some controversy in their own time.
Neil Musante published the definitive treatment of Bolen’s life and output, The Medallic Work of John Adams Bolen, in 2002. The book, whose catalog establishes the parameters and numbering system of Bolen material that PCGS will grade, was the product of years-long research into Bolen’s life and the availability of his various tokens and medals on the market. In the book, Musante reports that “Bolen gained a somewhat negative notoriety” for the struck copies despite the fact that “right from that start, each copy was well publicized at issue with no intent to defraud, but over time this fact was either forgotten or ignored. “Musante further reflects that “This negative recognition was probably the catalyst that prompted him to issue the 1905 catalog.” Bolen published a catalog describing his entire body of work near the end of his life; he died in 1906.
Musante elaborated that Bolen’s struck copies were “made in order to capitalize on the growing collector interest of the post-Civil War period. He sold them for not a lot of money, say $0.25 or $0.50, depending on the metal. Whatever money he raised, he used to support his own collecting habit, although he was not a buyer of high-end or expensive coins.”
Some of Bolen’s other notable works include a medal for the Pioneer Baseball Club, a Springfield-area semi-professional baseball team; copies of 1780s Bar Coppers; 1730s Higley Coppers; 1690s Carolina Elephant Tokens; and store cards for his own business. He also produced store cards for other businesses.
Some of Bolen’s work depicted landmarks around Springfield including the Armory, where he had worked during the Civil War, the Masonic Temple, and the Pynchon House. Some notable events like the Soldiers’ Fair held in the city in December of 1864 were also subjects of Bolen tokens and medals. He produced medals for organizations in which he was a member or employee, including the Springfield Antiquarian Society and Springfield Armory.
Various combinations of dies comprise a diverse catalog, pairing motifs not seen at the time they were struck, such as an issue in silver and copper pairing an Inimica Tyrannis Americana obverse with a Confederatio reverse, listed as Musante JAB-8; interestingly, this mule was the first Bolen mule certified by PCGS.
Bolen muled classic colonial/early American designs with his own store card, perhaps trying to tie his die-cutting acumen and numismatic products to those avidly collected and eagerly sought by early American numismatists. Bolen sometimes sold dies after he produced a number of examples of a given issue, sometimes defacing the dies before sale. Collectors can, in some instances, determine who struck a given example by the state of the dies, if their state can be determined. Restrikes and overstrikes using original Bolen dies have been produced into the present century, underscoring his numismatic staying power. On some occasions, Bolen’s contemporaries used his dies in combination with their own. George Hampden Lovett, a New York-based die sinker active in the latter half of the 19th century, paired Bolen’s dies with his own, creating mules in two senses: hitherto-unknown pairings of designs, and dies made by two different well-known 19th-century diesinkers.
Bolen’s work occasionally took on a political dimension. He produced medals lamenting the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and supporting the 1868 Presidential candidacy of Ulysses S. Grant.
Many of these pieces, from store cards to the high-quality copies/reproductions of classic North American colonial coins, became collectibles in their own right, both because of the faithfulness of the reproductions, the quality of the engraving and die work, and their relative rarity. Musante writes that, whatever their notoriety, Bolen’s “copies found homes in some of the most important numismatic collections ever assembled.” Some present-day hobbyists and professionals devote their collecting energies to Bolen’s body of work, and his rarest and most sought-after pieces regularly realize multi-thousand-dollar prices at auction.
Copies were Bolen’s strong suit. Richard Wayne Johnson, the first editor of Coin World, a company historian for the Medallic Art Company, and a lifelong journalist and professional numismatist who specialized in art medals, offered this assessment on Dick Johnson’s Databank, a website dedicated to medallic artists: “He was weak creating new designs, but was an excellent copyist. His dies are characterised by stark devices without further symbolism or decoration often with reverses which were entirely typographic.”
PCGS began grading and encapsulating John Adams Bolen’s medals and tokens on December 15, 2013, according to PCGS grader Dylan Dominguez. The first spec number, 522985, is JAB-8, a 1785-dated Inimica Tyranis/Confederatio mule produced around 1863. The intervening dozen years have seen hundreds of grading events over dozens of types, searchable on PCGS’ online database, PCGS CoinFacts, or the PCGS Population Report.
Bolen material, like tokens and medals broadly, presents graders with specific challenges. Dominguez shares that “JAB material requires individual identification and proper spec attribution for each token and medal. For most Bolen material, we can cross-reference with previously graded examples to verify dies.”
Certification and encapsulation offer attribution and certainty that the graded material is authentic. Attribution and noting of major issues are other advantages. Grades for Bolen material, like much certified exonumia, tend to cluster in the Mint State range, as the pieces never circulated to any meaningful extent.
Bolen material certified by PCGS comes up fairly regularly at auction. In June of this year, Stack’s Bowers Galleries auctioned the Claremont Collection’s group of more than 130 Bolen items, notable among them examples of the Pioneer Baseball Club Medals, a Confederatio Cent muling, and an 1869 copper plate with multiple die impressions.
Most major auction houses that deal with tokens and medals have handled certified Bolen material. Collectors interested in getting a sense of the market would do well to examine the realized prices.