Gold Local WW I Service Medals

We are all know of the many locally issued WWI service medals most of which are bronze. A small number of them are silver and a very small percentage are…

We are all know of the many locally issued WWI service medals most of which are bronze. A small number of them are silver and a very small percentage are in gold. Posthumous issues of the regular bronze and silver versions are often indicated by the addition of a gold star on the ribbon. When a medal was issued in silver it usually just meant that the issuers had more money to spend and probably a smaller number of veterans than the larger towns which could not afford to issue huge numbers of silver medals. When a gold medal was issued more often than not it was a posthumous issue given to the next of kin. One interesting example is the gold pin back medal issued by Kenosha County, Wisconsin which is illustrated below. It is named to Sgt. Max A. Gould who died of pneumonia Oct. 3, 1918. (An awful lot of our WWI casualties died of disease.) I bought the medal years ago from a very knowledgeable dealer when the price of gold was still affordable. Several years later I saw another one of these medals on his list with the same name! I never expected to find a second rare gold death medal of this type with the same name as mine so I asked the dealer to explain this and learned that such medals are given to the next of kin but what happens when there is a widowed wife and a grieving parent(s)? In Kenosha County both got a medal.