Catalogs - Gold Medals

Harrow is an independent school for boys (aged 13-18), and is located in Harrow on the Hill in the London Borough of Harrow. It was founded in 1572 under a Royal Charter granted by Queen Elizabeth I. It is widely known for its close competition, both sporting and academic, with Eton College and also other private schools. Harrow currently has approximately 800 pupils, all of whom board full-time at a cost of £24,825 per year. Harrow has a large number of well known alumni, including seven former British Prime Ministers (most notably Winston Churchill), and the first Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. In addition, 19 Old Harrovians have been awarded the Victoria Cross. This medal is specifically described in detail in the book “An Olla Podrida, or Scraps Numismatic, Antiquarian and Literary” by Richard Sainthill published in 1853. In his introduction, Sainthill celebrates this as an example “of high excellence in medallic art”. He then describes this in greater detail as being "the Prize-medal for Mathematics at Harrow, and bears on the obverse the bust of the founder of the premium, Joseph Neeld, Esq. One of the governors of this celebrated foundation; and those scholars who obtain it will have the double pleasure of possessing a testimony of their own successful studies and a splendid specimen of medallic portraiture. It has great depth and breadth of effect, exquisite taste in the arrangement of the hair, and surpassing delicasy and finish and finish of execution. Nature has bestowed on Mr. Neeld an unusually fine profile for a medal – earnest and intellectual; and Art has most successfully put forth her powerful capabilities to hand down the knowledge of it, and of herself, to other and distant times."

Provenance:

• Martin Deeran

Provenance:

• Stack's

According to R. W. Julian in Medals of The United States Mint:

The Riggs medal was struck at the mint in 1868 and 1869, but due to some confusion in the records between this medal and the commemorative medal for the City College of New York, it is not possible to give precise mintage figures in the annual tables.  The medals were to be awarded from the interest on a $1000 fund set up some years before 1868.  Riggs also paid for the dies.  They were returned to New York on June 3, 1870.

Note: I have seen a well-done, but cast fake example of this medal.  Be careful!