Medals are issued in cases, boxes and envelopes. For years I have mentioned to collectors not to discard these. This important fact became evident this week when I was researching a rather scarce so-called dollar.

Cases often contain a name not found on the medal, sometimes even printed on the satin liner inside the case. Envelopes often contain more data than the name of the medal. Boxes seldom reveal such information.

In Joe Levine's auction catalog #78 (June 7, 2008) appeared an illustration of the Louisiana Centennial Medal (HK 396) with the box in which it was issued. Bottom line on the top of the box was a tiny line, "Coleman E. Adler, Maker, N.O." That triggered a research effort.

The first place I looked was my own databank of American artists of coins and medals. Sure enough, I found a single entry to Coleman E. Adler. He had a state seal relief cast at Gorham in 1909. He issued the HK medal in 1912. Can we assume that state seal relief was Louisiana -- and that was the image on the obverse of the centennial medal?

When I entered that entry from Gorham archives I searched the usual artists directories without luck. So now I turned to Google -- what better starting place for any research effort -- to learn that Adler Coleman was the name of a jewelry firm in New Orleans.

Searching deeper I found Coleman Adler's obituary: born in Slovakia January 10, 1868, Came to America 1897, opened a jewelry store in New Orleans in 1898. He issued the Louisiana Centennial Medal in 1912. He died February 17, 1938.

So we can conclude his jewelry firm commissioned someone (unknown artist) to prepare that model that Gorham cast in metal. He then had medals made -- not by striking -- but as Joe Levine reveals all were electrotype casts. It is a scarce medal today and obviously that is why Hibler and Kappen did not illustrate it in their 1963 classic book on So-Called Dollars. (Had they found one they may not have included it since it was not diestruck.)

However that is not the end of the story. In 2012 the Coleman Adler firm issued a bicentennial medal for Louisiana's 200th statehood anniversary. So Coleman Adler should be considered a publisher or issuer of the medal, not the artist, for both medals.

A mystery solved because someone saved the box the medal came in that ended up in Joe's auction.