DANIEL WEBSTER | Coins Medal honors Civil War hero

A Civil War hero who won the Medal of Honor for valor in the Wilderness campaign has been remembered with medals marking his entry into the Jewish-American Hall of Fame.
Leopold Karpeles, born in Prague but raised in Texas, joined the Union Army because of his hatred for slavery. As a color sergeant, he won the Medal of Honor for standing his ground and rallying troops from his Massachusetts regiment. After recovering from wounds in 1864, Karpeles became a founder of the Medal of Honor Legion.
The Hall of Fame medal, by sculptor Alex Shagin, depicts a uniformed Karpeles with the flag. The reverse shows a letter from Lincoln to Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia thanking the congregation for its prayers. Karpeles joins Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk and George Gershwin, among others, in the cyberspace Hall of Fame.
The medals are in bronze ($35), pure silver ($95) or 10 kt gold ($895). Queries go to (800) 472-6327 or www.amuseum.org/jahf on the Web.
Convention
The Baltimore Coin and Currency convention will be the site of a major auction by Bowers and Merena. The sale will offer an almost complete array of half-dollars bearing the image of Liberty capped.
Collections owned by Jay Roe, Russell J. Logan and Gilbert G. Steinberg will go on the block. Gold coins will include an 1850 Baldwin Horseman, a $10 coin struck by a private mint in San Francisco during the gold rush.
The sale will be held in the Baltimore Convention Center.
A mail bid sale offering a range of Morgan dollars will be held this month by Catherine E. Bullowa, long-time Philadelphia dealer. Closing date is Nov. 18.
The sale will involve 493 lots of U.S. coinage and some foreign coins, paper money and ancient coins. Bullowa says most interest in this sale will be on the 1887-O Morgan dollar in near-proof condition, and an 1883-S dollar, choice uncirculated.
Catalogs are available from her at Suite 2112, 161 Walnut St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19103.
XDaniel Webster is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.