American Metal
As most military collectors realize, something in their life experience starts them on a path of collecting in an area of strong interest. In this author’s case, an aunt gave me a pair of WWI German medals, including an Iron Cross, which led to a lifetime love of collecting medallic art and medals of all varieties.
In recent years my primary focus has been collecting the local United States medals of WWI. A large variety of state, city, county and organization medals can be found in this area. Collectors soon learn that while most of the medals in this area show a variety of bronze planchet medals with different styles of ribbons, often larger WWI medals appear in a variety of plaques with presentation cases. Examples are seen in the WWI medals presented by the Orange County, Calif., and the American Car and Foundry Company.
In this pursuit of WWI medals I spotted a large
