BELGIUM, bronze medal, 1853, marriage of the king’s son

DescriptionThe Duke of Brabant married a member of the Austrian imperial family, the event announced by the issue of this official medal made by the government mint. It was the size of the contemporary 10 centimes coin, and theoretically might have been spent.The European cultures went kind of medal crazy in the 19th century. Governments and people made them all the time. Any big event was likely to have a medal made commemorating it. The late 20th century and early 21st century equivalents might be the commemorative T shirt.There are two kinds of things that are called “medals.” One is things that look like coins but don’t express a value. Sometimes those medals are considerably larger than most coins. The other kind of medal is a metal thing designed to be displayed on one’s chest, often a reward for something, often in a military context. If the medal is small enough it is sometimes called a “medallet.”The word “exonumia” is used to describe all kinds of things that are “like” coins but are not coins. I wrote a blog post on that subject. Basic categories: 1. used like a coin but not issued by a national government, 2. looks like a coin but not made for spending, 3. other things that we are interested in.