A bronzed-copper proof strike of the Royal Society Medal: no comparable example is recorded, and this represents an important and interesting insight into the minting of the famous Royal Society Medal in memory of Captain Cook. This is an exceptionally interesting survival, not only highly appealing its own right but giving tangible evidence of the actual process by which Pingo produced the famous medal.

A bronzed-copper proof strike of the Royal Society Medal: no comparable example is recorded, and this represents an important and interesting insight into the minting of the famous Royal Society Medal in memory of Captain Cook. This is an exceptionally interesting survival, not only highly appealing its own right but giving tangible evidence of the actual process by which Pingo produced the famous medal.

Although the medal was not ultimately issued until 1784, the initial plans were made during the very first weeks after news of Cook's death reached London. As President of the Royal Society, and as Cook's old shipmate on the Endeavour, Joseph Banks was driven to make a medal to commemorate the loss, and formally mooted the project as early as 27 January 1780. Much taken with the idea – Cook was not only the greatest navigator of his generation, but a recipient of the Society's prestigious Copley Medal – the Society resolved that a medal was "to be struck expressive of his deserts" and would be paid for by voluntary subscription. The project was taken up with great enthusiasm by the Fellows of the Society (the Pacific explorer Bougainville was just one of many who wrote to Banks hoping to be considered to receive a medal: The Banks Letters, ed. W.R. Dawson, 1958, p. 122).

Design entries were accepted from many different people, but it was the sketches of the Chief Engraver of the London Mint, Lewis Pingo, submitted by June of 1780, which took their fancy. Pingo's design would have been prepared in a wax or plaster intaglio, then engraved directly into the steel block for the minting process. Once the block was hardened, trial stampings would have been conducted, initially in lead (because of its softness) but then in copper, presumably as a more rigorous test for the die. L. Richard Smith hypothesises, no doubt accurately, that Banks's own experience with the infamous cracking of the die on the earlier "Resolution and Adventure" medal would have led him to be unusually cautious in this regard.

Thanks to the research of L. Richard Smith, the process of creating the medals is known in some detail. The die was ordered to be prepared on 15 June 1780 although, for reasons unknown, it was not until 20 November 1783 that Banks announced that the dye was finished, and that Pingo had "produced an impression taken in lead taken from the same." The first five gold medals were struck in January 1784.

Three versions were ultimately struck, some twenty or so in gold, the fine silver which was only available by subscription through the Royal Society, and the more common bronze. The medal became synonymous with Cook and a prized memento among his peers, doubly so after it was illustrated on the title-page of several editions of the official account of Cook's final voyage.