Medals of the U.S. Assay Commission

From time to time one hears that the United States Assay Commission may be brought back to life and pass on the gold and silver commemorative coins. Should this happen, it will bring back into existence the oldest federal commission, created in 1792. When the public participation was abruptly cancelled by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 as part of his cost-cutting drive in government, most numismatists viewed this as penny-wise and pound-foolish. Private appointees to the Commission paid their own expenses and the cost to the government was only a few thousand dollars at worst. (The Commission existed in a truncated form until 1980, when it was legislated out of existence.)

Until the 1977 cancellation, only two governments, that of Great Britain and the United States, had a long-standing tradition of ordinary citizens testing the coinage for purity. No doubt the practice of a regular assay of the coinage existed in ancient times, but the modern foundation came under English King Henry III (1216-72). As early as 1250, a trial of the “pyx,” as it came to be known, was well-established, and this tradition strongly influenced Congress when the basic mint law was passed in April 1792. The United States owed its assay commission directly to the