103318 | UNITED STATES & CANADA. Border Dispute Silver Medal.

103318  |  UNITED STATES, CANADA & NETHERLANDS. American-Canadian Border Arbitration silver Medal. Issued 1829 celebrating the role of Willem I, King of the Netherlands, in the "arbitration" (43mm, 28.67 g, 12h). Of uncertain manufacture.

 

WILHELMVS I NEERLANDIAE REX LVX. M. DVX, bust facing slightly right in military attire // AB / ANGLIS / ET / AMERICANIS / SEPTEMTRIONAL. / DE / TERMINO MOTO / ARBITER / VOCATUS / 1829 (as an intermediary, he called for the settling of the border between the English [ie, Canada] and the North Americans [ie, United States]) in ten lines. Edge: Plain.

 

Dirks 310; Pax in Nummis 802; Leroux 830; Hunter Coll. 437 [R4]; Wurzbach 9757; Ford V, 187; Medina 398. PCGS MS-64. Very attractively toned and with exceptional iridescence and luster; a stray mark in the reverse field prevents an even higher, gem designation. Very rare in silver, especially in such an elevated state of preservation as is the case here. The Ford specimen, listed as a prooflike Choice Uncirculated piece, realized a total of $1,955 over two decades ago in 2005.

 

Ex Munthandel Verschoor inventory, January 2000.

 

Growing tensions between the United States and Canada, particularly between the state of Maine (US) and the provinces of Québec and New Brunswick (Canada), following the ends of the American Revolution and the War of 1812 left the borders between the two countries in somewhat of a flux. By the latter part of the 1820s, King Willem I of the Netherlands intervened as an intermediary, brokering a tentative border solution. While celebrated as successful on this medal, a resolution was not agreed upon at the time, with the conflict continuing for over another decade, recognizably in the form of the Aroostook War of 1838-1839. Finally, with the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, the border in this area was settled, roughly comporting to the lines originally suggested by Willem over a decade prior. Regarding manufacture of this medal, while Wurzbach suggests Loos in Berlin, a search of their product catalog from a little over a decade later reveals no such instance of its availability for collectors, nor does it display an artist's signature or mint (LOOS) reference—both of which would be highly unusual for a Loos-made product of the era. As such, it is of the opinion of this cataloger that, despite possessing the "feel" of a Loos medal, it is not one from their output.

 

As recounted by Kraljevich in the Ford catalog:

 

“The boundary dispute between America and Great Britain over the land and water boundaries between Maine and Canada took nearly a century and a half to settle. The treaty of Paris (1783) fixed the north-east boundary of the United States along the middle of the St. Croix River "from its mouth in the bay of Fundy to its source" and "due north from the source of St. Croix river to the highlands; along the said highlands which divide those rivers that empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean, to the north-westernmost head of Connecticut river; thence down along the middle of that river to the forty-fifth degree of north latitude." The vagueness of the description was the cause of the dispute.

 

The various attempts to resolve the dispute include Jay's Treaty (1794), the Commission of 1798, the Treaty of Ghent (1814), commissions under Ghent (1816 and 1822), the Convention of 1827 setting up the King of Netherlands as arbitrator (approved in 1829, the date of the medal), the king's decision (1831) rejected lending to the Aristook War (1838-39), and the Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842) which settled the land boundary issues. The water boundary problems persisted, however, leading to the conventions of 1892 and 1908, the Treaty of Washington (1910), and the second Treaty of Washington (1925) that finally settled the boundary."

 

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Upload: 2 March 2026.