Baker-Manley Collection of Numismatic Washingtonia
The Baker-Manley Collection is the ultimate grouping of numismatic Washingtonia not only for its quality and size—over 950 pieces—but for its provenance.
The Money Museum is proud to present the Baker-Manley collection of Washington-related medals. Consisting of more than 950 pieces, it is the preeminent collection of Washingtonia in the United States. Of historic provenance, the core of the collection was formed by William Spohn Baker (1824-1897) – the first numismatic researcher to compile a comprehensive catalog of medals related to George Washington. When Baker’s collection came to auction in 2021, Manley purchased an extraordinary 900+ objects to preserve them for future study. In 2021, he donated these medals along with other important Washington-related materials he’d acquired separately over the years to the ANA, forming an exemplary Washingtonia collection in size, quality and provenance.

Baker was not the first to write about medals related to George Washington, but in 1885 his Medallic Portraits of Washington was published, and it became the undisputed standard work on the subject and determined the way that collectors would organize and collect Washington medals for over a century. What made his work so essential and unique was its comprehensiveness, organization and Baker’s numbering system. Reprinted by Krause Publications in 1965, with editorial updates by George Fuld, it was revised again in 1985 to include new material, and once again in 1999 by Fuld and Russell Rulau, who kept Baker’s original format while adding images and hundreds of new medals. It was not until 2016 that a new catalog of Washington medals was produced – Medallic Washington, by Neil Musante – that has become the standard reference for the series.
Medallic Portraits of Washington was the product of Baker’s dedicated collecting and research over the course of decades. He amassed a large collection of prints and engravings, approximately 500 hundred books and over 1100 medals. Baker summarized his motivation for writing book in an 1884 quote: “Washington Medals form no inconsiderable portion of that great monument which love and gratitude have so steadily builded [sic], in memory of the services and virtues of the foremost man in American history…”
Explore this Historic Collection
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Text descriptions of the objects based on Stacks auction of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania collection in November, 2019.