Of the most popular metal miniatures are called tin soldiers. The first characters seem to have been made with tin, is said to be able to do with precious metals like gold or silver.
It is not known with certainty the origin of these strange figures may well be that the military of ancient times used to make simulated future battles in a hypothetical table as a battlefield and they were playing a desktop battles, later moved to the field battle. Therefore, it is also possible that these characters pasasen after the children of these marshals, generals, to be entertained by playing these wars with war toys. The origin of the soldiers and toy series takes place in the German city of Nuremberg in the mid eighteenth century. These first soldiers measured 25 mm. and had only two dimensions. It was in France where the first soldiers appeared in made three-dimensional lead material cheaper than alearon antimony tin to make it stronger. Finally, the English developed the holes that allowed soldiers to make them accessible to a wider audience.
Subsequently, the use of child soldiers as toys waned due to the high toxicity of lead and the paint that covered them. As a replacement toy, in the twentieth century children have played with figures of "cowboys and Indians" and other characters made from a kind of rubber that soon after they were replaced by plastic.
The nineteenth century, especially after 1830, with the emergence of 'plating' medals are made with other materials: alpaca, white metal, besides the use of silver with different purities. The Art Nouveau-current bridge between the nineteenth and twentieth medalistics boosts renewal and thus the religious medal. New sculptors, engravers and publishers with technical advances and the invention of the pantograph lowering medalistics help the revival.
Industrialization and the dissemination of the coin machines do emerge in the late nineteenth century, the figure of the "editor" who had in his service to sculptors who performed the sketches that were not only played by the recorders but also that these touch-ups performed of the coinage recorded. Sometimes the editor medals were signed in turn by the recorders.
On the other hand, from a devotional standpoint, new religious events took place in mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: The apparitions of the Virgin in 1830 to St. Catherine Laboure, origin of the invocation of the Blessed Virgin Medal Miraculous. The 1858 in Lourdes, 1917 in Fatima, near the canonization of St. Therese of Lisieux and Teresa of Lisieux in 1925, are reviving the spirituality of the religious medal as prayer and trust in the granting of "Thank you.
