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Research Concerning My Medal's Value: Findings of the Value of Gold and The Great War

 

 


[1]

After receiving my medal back in 2019 as a collegiate track runner, I did not place much thought into what its components are. I was, however, very pleased to have won it, and now that I am in Dr. Bruggeman’s Material Culture course, I am on the hunt to discover what my medal consists of. To gain potentially fruitful results of a CAA medal’s structure, I should reach out to the organizers of the CAA activities to gain an idea of what the process to form a CAA medal is and what elements would be found in the medal. For the time being, for this week’s analysis on my CAA medal, I chose to analyze medals in broad terms of object biography. I concentrated on the decades of the 20th century before the Great War as well as the postwar decades to research the precious metal, gold: a metal which is often found in commemorative medals like mine.

While researching the value of gold in decades surrounding the Great War, one of my strategies was to find the current monetary value of a gold WWI medal awarded to an American citizen during the Great War and postwar era. After a few search terms and avenues of research, I came across a medal of interest which also seemed telling of how other American Great War medals like it might be monetarily valued. The medal was a Gold Star Mother Pilgrimage Medal on a website called “First Class Coins”. To provide my reasoning for my excitement of having found this medal, The Gold Star Mothers of the U.S. postwar years were American women who traveled to France to commemorate the combatants who were buried on French land. Since I am researching the commemoration of Black WWI veterans and Black women with relatives who served in the war made this pilgrimage, this find was quite significant and nice to have come across!

This particular medal is described by the seller as being “bronze with a gold star”, and though the majority of it may not be gold, the gold star contains the precious metal I have interest in[2]. Whether this medal is an authentic medal is not in my expertise, but it is currently being placed as purchasable at $275. From my other searches on e-commerce websites like Amazon and eBay and my searches via Google’s search engine, a lot of Great war replica medals were priced at no more than $20 dollars. This being said, medals that are labeled as authentic on these websites are within a very similar price range to that of the Gold Star Mother Pilgrimage medal which grabbed my attention ($200, $300, $400). From my research findings, I would think that if a Great War medal is deemed to be “authentic”, I would peg it to cost no less than $100 dollars. I do not intend to place my calculation of this medal over others, nor do I claim to be an expert on calculating its monetary value. I will, however, continue to research the social and economic value placed on said medals both in the era in which Americans received them and how Americans tend to price and value them in contemporary times. This search also helps me to reflect on the authenticity of my own medal. Is it real gold? Does it contain any element of gold? Hopefully, I can contact members of the CAA, but until then, it is, and always will be one of my most valued possessions.

 I also tracked down some very interesting monographs and articles which focused on Gold as well as the war’s impact on gold as a monetary value. In one of these articles titled The Gold Standard published by British professor and economist J.H., Jones provides insight as to how nations involved with the Great War valued gold as a means of transaction in prewar years and his perception of the decline of gold as an efficient and valued currency. Jones notes that gold was of great value in the turn of the 19th century, yet during the war its value declined and nations like Britain and the U.S. struggled in prewar years to use the value of gold for financial gain in postwar years[3]. Though the article did not bring into conversation the value of gold medals per say, I did find it enlightening in terms of the broad value of gold in the U.S. and Britain. The views of an academic like J.H. Jones and his perception of the value of gold and the U.S.’ economic situation in terms of gold as an economic factor was something I found to be educational.

 


[3] J. H. Jones, The Gold Standard, (The Economic Journal 43, no. 172 1933): 553-554. Accessed March 9, 2021. doi:10.2307/2224503.

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