A couple of comments, first coins are minted to circulate while medals are not. Coins necessitate the need to be minted in a manner that they have lower relief to circulate with designs that are acceptable to the general public. Coins must also be made according to certain weights and measures. Medals on the other hand can be minted in high relief and struck on larger blanks made of a variety of metals. Furthermore, I believe that the sculptors of medals are less politically restrained. This allows them to create medals that are truly beautiful works of art. The other comment I have is that the medal you picture is absolutely gorgeous! The high relief on most medals make them artistically stand out and this one is no exception. The relief on this piece is absolutely stunning!

Gary

Thanks for the kind words about the medals. Ive tried to get the best example of each official medal that I can (they can be found in gold as well but that is beyond my snack bracket, so I stick to brass/bronze/copper and silver).

However I would argue with a couple of your comments. 

First, the designs of coins for much of this period were not made to be acceptable to the general public but were (and I think, still are) approved by the monarch himself or herself. Having said that, there were examples when the designers went back to the drawing board if the public did not like the design.

Second, their manufacture according to weights and measures can be made to mean different things. While it is true that, once a design is approved for a coin of a particular denomination, care had to be taken to ensure consistent weights and measures for that denomination,in fact, prior to the Napoleonic Wars of the late eighteenth and early 19th century, they also had to be worth their intrinsic weight in the metal they were made from. For example, a shilling had to have a shilling's weight of silver in it. If it didn't, by and large it would not be accepted by the public. The concept of token coinage that we have had since, says that a piece of metal , officially stamped with an approved design, was worth a shilling because the government said it is.The old view created issues of its own, from rampant shaving of metal off of a coin in the hope of passing off the difference as the full value (have a look at a lot of 17th century pieces to see what I mean) to problems keeping coins in circulation should there be inflation or deflation in the price of the metal involved in the coin. When the metal price changed, all existing coins either had too much or too little metal value in them. This could require a recoinage with a change in the weights and measures of the coins involved.

In addition, while it is true that medals could in theory be made with less political restraint,or based on whim, in practice and by definition, official Coronation Medals reflected the official views of the government and the monarchy itself. Take a look at the reverse  of the James II medal I posted earlier and you will see a crown handed from heaven, signifyi ng the idea that the right to rule was given by God himself and that therefore others had no right to interfere, that is, that the monarchs right to rule was absolute. And in general, such was the grip on the reins of power by the upper classes that any other medals deemed seditious could bring a world of hurt to their makers. So these medals, especially the earlier ones, were made under different political conditions than we are more used to in the modern day.