Medallic Art Company Ltd. By Art Nadler You've heard of such prestigious awards as the Pulitzer Prize, the Peabody Award, the Congressional Medal of Honor and the National Medal of Science. All of these commemorative medals are manufactured in Nevada, in the little town of Dayton, located 10 miles east of Carson City. The Medallic Art Company Ltd. has been casting collectible and commemorative coins and bronze and precious medal awards since 1903.

Robert Hoff, president of the internationally recognized manufacturing facility, moved his company in 1997 to Nevada into a 115,000 square-foot building. There, master sculptors reproduce medals and awards from original bas-relief models using bronze, copper, nickel silver, aluminum, gold or silver. Hoff explains that the highly detailed awards are first sculpted into clay, approximately 12 inches in diameter. The creation of the artworks, together with the machine tooling of dies, takes about two weeks, he says. Medallic Art's most popular items are the national parks and monument medals, Hoff says. These consist of 60 museum quality antique bronze medals depicting images on coins measuring 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Each medal, the company brochure points out, is designed to preserve a lasting memory of a favorite national park site. "We do everything inside the plant," Hoff says. "We design, melt the metal and mint the awards." Medallic art is frequently asked to design and mint medals to honor company employees, special events (such as the 25th anniversary of Woodstock and Triple-Crown winner Secretariat), university awards, religious plaques, holiday coins and even key tags. It has minted the official Presidential Inaugural Medal for 11 inaugurations. "We were extremely pleased with the quality of the statuettes and with the timeliness of their arrival in New York," Barry Sherman, director of the George Foster Peabody Awards at the University of Georgia, recently wrote. "It was very gratifying to be able to present each recipient with his/her personalized award at the awards banquet." The Medallic Art Company is the largest private mint in the country. It currently employs 35 craftsmen. The company is family run by Robert Hoff, his wife, Connie and daughters Holly and Heidi. Medal designs can either be custom made or taken from stock concepts, Hoff says. Each bas-relief sculpture is hand sculpted with attention given to detail and accuracy. For information, contact: The Medallic Art Company Ltd., 80 Airpark Vista Blvd., Dayton, NV. 89403. Phone: 1-800-843-9854, or (775) 246-6000. Fax: (775) 246-6006. E-mail at: [email protected]. Web site: www.medallic.com.