Medal Germany Frankfurt Gold Shooting 1887

This beautiful piece is a gold medal from the Ninth German Federal Shooting Festival of 1887 in Frankfurt.

The medal weighs 16 grams (33 mm diameter) and therefore contains about one-half troy ounce of gold. If gold is selling at $1000 US dollars per ounce, the basic gold value (or melt value, or base value, BV) is about $500. The price of gold changes every day. Look it up at kitco.com.

This 'coin' is not really a coin, but a medal awarded in a shooting competition. Such non-coin pieces are called exonumia, and we enlisted the services of Rich Hartzog of exonumia.com. Here is Rich's reply to our inquiry:

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I don't have any books on German shooting medals, sorry. A lovely piece. However, it suffers the same problem as do all gold medals, a high intrinsic value. Consequently the number of collectors decreases greatly. And, selling it brings up the same problem. If the gold melt value is $500, the seller needs to realize more than that, or it would be easier to melt it. If consigned to auction, it has to bring $625 or more, at a 20% commission, to net the melt value. While I've never had any gold SM to sell in my auctions, I'd be doubtful it would bring 20% over melt in my sales. Obviously the best venue would be a German auction house that has had success in the past, in selling such a Shooting Medal. I regret I have nobody I can recommend. There are a very few dealers would pay full melt or a bit over, just for the beauty, and then attempt to make 10-20%. Jonathan Kern comes to mind. There is one specialist in Swiss SM in the USA that I know: NumiSwiss. You might contact him.
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By melt value Rich means the value of the gold content alone. CoinQuest estimates the catalog value over BV as follows:

worn: BV
average circulated: BV + $10
well preserved: BV + $40
fully uncirculated: BV + $200

The medal in our main picture (upper right) is exceptional. It is in absolutel pristine condition and has knock-your-socks-off eye appeal. It solf for $3800 during a 2005 auction by Spink. CoinQuest thanks Spink for use of their amazing photo.
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