1900 Assay Commission Medal - JK-AC-44, Silver, William McKinley

Coin Details

Auction Record

$1,320 SP63 08-23-2024 Stack's Bowers

Description

The 1900 Assay Commission medal JK-AC-44 in silver features the third McKinley portrait, struck during the landmark year when Congress passed the Gold Standard Act, formally establishing the gold dollar as the standard unit of value and ending the bimetallic debate that had consumed American politics for three decades. The Gold Standard Act of 1900 represents the culmination of the monetary policy arc that runs through the entire Assay Commission medal series from the 1870s onward. The silver from which this medal is struck had been at the center of the nation's most contentious economic debate, and its formal demotion from monetary co-equal to subordinate metal by the 1900 act gave silver Assay Commission medals a faintly elegiac quality. The McKinley silver JK-AC-44 from the year of the Gold Standard Act is one of the most historically significant pieces in the presidential sequence of the Assay Commission series. It documents the moment when the monetary question was finally settled — at least until the dramatic changes of the twentieth century would reopen fundamental questions about the relationship between precious metals and the money supply.

Rarity Notes

JK-AC-44 (1900) in silver (AR). Third "William McKinley" portrait, from the year the Gold Standard Act was enacted. Silver strikings are scarce.

Cross References

PCGS #518436; JK-AC-44; 1900 Assay Commission