1894 California Inter. Exposition Medal, Electric Tower Dollar - USA

Country * Tokens * (United States - Exposition Tokens)
Type: Miscellaneous Token
Year: 1894
Mint: San Francisco
Currency: United States - So-Called Dollars
Composition: Aluminium
Weight: 6.3 g.
Diameter: 40 mm
Thickness: 3 mm
Shape: Round
Grade: XF (Shocks Edge)
Orientation: Medal alignment ↑↑ (Rotaded Die 10°)

Commemorative issue:
Ground Breaking Souvenir - California International Exposition.

Obverse:
Within sunken center, edifice; above, around Administration Building; on edifice base, r., A. Hylen. Chi.; below edifice, microscopic Blumenfeld S. F. C. and bear, walking r.; outside, around California Midwinter International Exposition * 1894 *.

Lettering:
CALIFORNIA MIDWINTER INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION
★ 1894 ★
ADMINISTRATION BUILDING
Blumenfeld  S.F.C.

Reverse:
Electric tower; within scroll, to l. in field, 18 and within scroll to r., 94; below tower is bear, walking r.; outside, around Souvenir of San Francisco.

Lettering:
SOUVENIR OF SAN FRANCISCO
18  94

Edge:
Plain.

Comments:
Attended by two million visitors, the 1894 World’s Fair on 200 acres of Golden Gate Park, brainchild of San Francisco Chronicle publisher M.H. de Young, featured more than 100 buildings. Except for the Palace of Fine Arts and Japanese Tea Garden, most of the structures were torn down,  including the 260 foot “Electric Tower” which helped illuminate the exotic architecture and “offered intrepid climbers a bird’s eye view” of the grounds. This coin, made in the Indian temple-styled Mechanical Arts Building was a technological novelty because Aluminum had been as valuable as gold and silver until the development in the late 1880s of an electrolytic process for cheaply extracting the element. 

Fuente : https://www.so-calleddollars.com/Events/...

Colección : US Colonial Issues, Tokens USA & North America (1616-date)