| Stephen Album Rare Coins > Auction 48 | Auction date: 18 January 2024 |
| Lot number: 1709 Price realized: 170 USD (Approx. 157 EUR) Note: Prices do not include buyer's fees. | |
| Lot description: UMAYYAD: AE fals (1.71g), al-Daybul, AH117, A-A204, date boldly clear, mint name only partially legible; six examples of this type, probably all dated AH117 (but some may be 119), sold in our previous auctions; porous surfaces as on all known examples, F-VF, RRR. Same reverse die as lot 207 in our Auction 43, thus confirming the mint name. Estimate: 120-160 USD Starting price: 100 USD |  |
Match 1:
| Stephen Album Rare Coins > Auction 48 | Auction date: 18 January 2024 |
| Lot number: 132 Price realized: 325 USD (Approx. 299 EUR) Note: Prices do not include buyer's fees. | |
| Lot description: UMAYYAD: AE fals (2.03g), al-Daybul, AH117, A-A204, very clear mint & date; six examples of this type, probably all dated AH117 (but some may be 119), sold in our previous auctions; porous surfaces as on all known examples, F-VF, RRR. Estimate: 200-250 USD Starting price: 160 USD |  |
Match 2:
| Spink > Auction 23005 | Auction date: 12 December 2023 |
| Lot number: 301 Price realized: 2,600 GBP (Approx. 3,266 USD / 3,028 EUR) Note: Prices do not include buyer's fees. | |
| Lot description: The 'Haddenham' Collection of English Coins | Edward the Confessor (1042-1066), 'Hammer Cross' Type, Penny, 1059-1062, Bath, Godric, + EADPAR-RD RE, crowned, draped and bearded bust right, trefoil-tipped sceptre before, rev. + GODRIC ON BAÐEN: voided short cross with each limb terminating in incurved segment of circle, 1.33g [20.53grns], 3h (Hildebrand - [Type G]; Freeman 28; SCBI 24 [West Country], 707-708 same dies; SCBI 42 [South Eastern ~ Sedlescombe Hoard], 1418 same dies; Lockett I, 842a same dies; cf. H A Parsons [BNJ, 1921], p. 40; North 828; BMC XI; Spink 1182), legends doubled with further die clashing, otherwise lightly toned, and of good metal, the attribution and pedigree certain, with only thirteen coins of this type known to Freeman for Bath (10 of Osmær; 3 of Godric) of which all of the latter are in Museums, presumed UNIQUE to commerce thus. Provenance, Warwick & Warwick 748, 20 August 2014, lot 354 - £343, with accompanying note of Victorian-era stationery, stating:, "One of the Saxon Coins found in a metal vessel at Sedlescombe [near] Battle, which probably were part of Harolds military chest [exchequer] for the defence of Hastings against William the Conqueror - They belonged to the reign of Edward the Confessor. They probably failed to arrive before the battle and were hastily hidden in the panic & flight which followed Harold's death.", Sedlescombe Hoard (1876), deposited, c. 1066, ~ Found by a labourer in a small iron pot whilst digging a drain in a meadow near the village of Battle on 26 August 1876. G S Hill, writing in the Numismatic Chronicle (1879, pp. 154-156), stated: "Within [much oxidised pot] was part of a leather bag, containing a pint of small old coins, silver pennies of four different sorts, but all of Edward the Confessor, who reigned A.D. 1042 to 1066. The manor in which they were found is said to have belonged to Earl Godwin, father of King Harold II. Some of the coins were very brittle and broken." Whilst many were dispersed before Treasure Trove stepped in, it is believed as many as 3,000 coins originally complemented the hoard. The local antiquarian Major Boyce Harvey Combe FSA exhibited four coins at the meeting of Society of Antiquaries in June 1877. , , Anthony Freeman noted: The recorded moneyers are Aegelmær, Eorlewine, Godric, Osmær and Wædel. This material enables a clear pattern to be identified of Bath as a two-moneyer mint, its needs met initially by Ægelmaer and Waedel (both of whom worked prior to Edward's accession), and their respective successors Osmær and Godric. Osmaer works into the post-Conquest period, but Godric is succeeded by Eorlewine in the Hammer Cross type. The absence of coins from the Pyramid type and from Harold II's reign marks a change in the mint's character. Thereafter minting appears to be erratic. Osmær continues at work but coins erratically (BMC types I, V and VIII in William's I reign), being joined in BMC III by Brungar and in BMC VIII by Ægelmær and possibly Godesbrand. , , The stability of size and degree of continuity among moneyers are impressive. There are no single-type moneyers and the mint appears free from whatever factors may have determined the changes in moneyer complement at neighbouring mints, such as Gloucester or Bristol. Bath's moneyers appear to pursue their career exclusively in the service of the mint, and the names of Ægelmaer, Eorlewine, Osmær and Wædel are unique in Edward's reign to Bath; except in so far as it must conform broadly to the requirements of minting policy, the Bath mint appears to function in complete isolation. Estimate: £400 - £600 |  |
Match 3:
| Spink > Auction 23151 | Auction date: 14 December 2023 |
| Lot number: 2006 Price realized: 370,000 GBP (Approx. 464,766 USD / 430,977 EUR) Note: Prices do not include buyer's fees. | |
| Lot description: (g) NGC PF63+ UCAM | William IV (1830-1837), Pattern Proof Five-Pounds, 1831, struck from the Coronation 'W.W.' Crown dies in .999 Fine Gold, by William Wyon after Francis Chantrey and Jean-Baptiste Merlen for the Royal Mint, GULIELMUS IIII D: G: BRITANNIAR: REX F: D: bare head right, W.W. buried in truncation, rev. crowned shield-of-arms within the Collar of the Order of the Garter and draped with ermine mantle, St George pendant below, edge plain, [Median Spink XRF: 99.99% Au], 39.828g [614.64grns], 5h ("A Memoir of the Life and Works of William Wyon ESQ A.R.A, Chief Engraver of the Royal Mint", Nicholas Carlisle [1837], pp. 107-109; "The Wyons", L S Forrer [Spink, 1917], p. 103; KM Pn99; Fb. 381; PCGS ID 531509/542036; MCE p. 94, Pattern 34a; L&S 2, p. 71 this coin mentioned; Davies 300; W&R 270 [R5]; ESC 272 [R5]; Bull 2463 [R5]; Holloway GH 102; Sainthill -; Montagu 1086; Murdoch 437; Nobleman 198; Wertheimer 176 = Lingford 533; Blake BL310 this coin ['6 known']; Lady Duveen 64 = Douglas-Morris 184 ['about 10 known']; Spink 3833), an historic scratch to forehead with the faintest wisps to fields, below neckline and to right of mantle above the expected die flaw, with delicate carbon spotting to peripheries, otherwise entirely original and utterly splendiferous, the "frabjous" fields of Wyon's auriferous "wonderland" canon a befittingly exalted canvas for the strikingly high relief and stupendously cameo "Coronation portrait" personally approved by the King from this very obverse die, from an exceedingly limited corpus; this the viable finest of the nine confirmed specimens; truly "fresh from the die" and technically FDC, totally unblemished by recent 'conservation' or even rim contact marks that plague the extremities of every other known survivor, simply put: outrageous; extraordinary; and practically peerless; unseen at public auction for almost a CENTURY, having previously blessed the Alfred John Morris; George Hamilton-Smith; Hugh Vincent Summers, George Blake and Charles Dabney-Thompson cabinets, in NGC 'St. Helier' holder, conservatively graded PF63+ ULTRA CAMEO (Cert. #6767923-004) [Only 1 Certified Finer]. Provenance, ~ Recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records (1969) as the most expensive British coin ever sold at the time. For context, the average house price in the United Kingdom in July 1966 was £3,558.0.0 ~ , Spink, by private treaty, 4 July 1966 - £5,350.0.0, Charles Dabney-Thompson, collection purchased en bloc by Spink, 1965, SCMB, June 1956, BL310* - "AV Five Pounds, 1831, Pattern by William Wyon and Merlen...only six coins of this denomination are believed to have been issued. brilliant, FDC, RRRR" - £800.0.0, George Blake, collection purchased by Seaby, May 1956, ~ 1956: "In May of this year we were able to announce the purchase of the George Blake collection, which was one of the best we have bought in recent years. Pieces worth noting where the Cromwell half-broad, Charles II Petition and Reddite crowns, the George III five guineas of 1777, and the William IV five pounds of 1831" (H A Seaby, SCMB, July 1966, p. 241) ~, B A Seaby, by private treaty with George Blake, by February 1947, Hugh Vincent Summers ['XYZ'], collection purchased by Seaby, 1946, George Hamilton-Smith (died 18 November 1926), Glendining, 23-25 May 1927, lot 189 - "Pattern Five Pound Piece, 1831....edge plain, brilliant and of great rarity" - £110.0.0 [Spink for H V Summers], "Formerly in the Morris Collection", Alfred John Morris (5 February 1880 - 16 January 1943), collection sold by private treaty to Hamilton-Smith, between April and July 1922, Little is known about the Morris collection, as only Hamilton-Smith seems to have directly or at least publicly benefitted from it. It contributed at least three coins, a 1770 Pattern Five Guineas, an 1820 Five Pounds and this 1831 Five Pounds which is rather telling of its calibre and quality. Indeed Morris, first appears on the radar at the Nobleman sale of 27 March 1922, when he newly-registers as a commission bidder with Spink for the sale. Presenting the profile of an investor, strangely Morris targets only four lots - the strikings in silver of the 1820 Five-Pounds and Two-Pounds; a Pattern 1816 Sovereign, and finally lot 67A - the Incorrupta Crown in Gold. Strikingly no effort was made towards bidding for the Pattern Five Guineas, the 1820 Five Pounds or indeed the Renotiere example of the 1831 Gold piece - highly suggestive of a pre-existing collection, but an especially targeted focus when bidding. In each case Morris would be defeated by Spink's separate commission bidder Virgil Michael Brand, perhaps initiating Morris to apply for membership to the British Numismatic Society only a month later whereupon he would undoubtedly have met one of its council members, George Hamilton-Smith who probably persuaded him to approach him in his separate capacity as newly acting director of auctioneer Glendining's. His father had founded a company of upholsterer spring manufacturers, having started his career as a book-keeper in Belper, Derbyshire. Partnering with Edward Bagshaw, the firm of Bagshaw and Morris operated under the Morris' sole ownership from 43 Charlotte Road, Shoreditch between 1889 and 1935. It claimed to be the oldest manufacturer of coppered-steel springs for the upholstery trade. , , Corpus:, , 1) The Arnold Specimen (May 1993); Private Collection [PCGS PR63 DCAM] , , 2) The Murdoch Specimen (January 2020), 39.87g; Private Collection [PCGS PR63 DCAM - Cert. #39237162] , , 3) The Duveen Specimen (October 2020), 39.90g; Submitted for grading, Sarasota, Florida (January 2014), and 'brown'-holdered [NGC PF63 UCAM - Cert. #3731659-001]; Resubmitted and "conserved" before sale in Monaco; Private Collection [NGC PF66* UCAM - Cert. #5744153-004] , , 4) The St. Helier Specimen (May 1927), 39.828g, this coin; [NGC PF63+ UCAM - Cert. #6767923-004] , , 5) The Paramount Specimen (January 2023), 40.446g; graded NGC Proof Details ~ Obverse Tooled [Cert. #6066350-025]; Private Collection, presently unencapsulated. , , 6) The Thomas H Law Specimen (August 2013); [NGC PF63 UCAM]. , , 7) The Strauss Specimen (May 1994); [PCGS PR61 DCAM] , , 8) The Hunterian Specimen (-), ex Major-General William Yorke-Moore, Sotheby's, 21 April 1879, lot 340 - £22.0.0 [Rollin & Feuardent for Burns]; Edward Burns, by private treaty with Coats; Thomas Coats, collection bequeathed to Hunterian Museum, 1921 , , 9) The Ashmolean Specimen (-) , , https://www.ngccoin.com/certlookup/6767923-004/63/ Estimate: £240000 - £300000 |  |
Match 4:
| Ira & Larry Goldberg Coins & Collectibles > Auction 137 | Auction date: 29 January 2024 |
| Lot number: 1128 Price realized: 72,500 USD (Approx. 67,150 EUR) Note: Prices do not include buyer's fees. | |
| Lot description: Great Britain. 'Fine Work' Five Guineas, 1701. S.3456; Fr-310. William III, 1694-1702. Plain Scepters. Second laureate bust right. Reverse; Crowned cruciform shields with plain scepters. Sharply struck example with fine hair detail. The 'Fine Work' gold coins of William III are among the most spectacular of the period. Surfaces are proof like and gleaming with luster. A lovely example with great eye appeal. Pop 4; 4 in 62; 6 in 63. PCGS graded MS-61. Estimated Value $30,000 - UP The marvelous and deeply engraved portrait of King William on this coin, known as the "fine work" style, appeared only at the end of his reign and only on three of his gold denominations, all dated 1701. It was the last date to appear on any of his money. Each of the three gold coins presented the king wearing a long periwig slightly differently, but the most elegant of the designs was shown on this, the largest denomination. It was remarkably lifelike, even to the king's crooked nose and fine moustache. The reverse side's royal shield reverted from the elegantly Renaissance style of the former dual monarchy's coinage, presenting the more traditional four crowned royal shields in the shape of a "cruciform," each angle displaying a scepter topped by an emblem of the four kingdoms-of England, Scotland, France and Ireland in order from the first to last angle. The bold surrounding legend in Latin abbreviations proclaims William as King of Great Britain, France and Ireland. The famous Great Re-coinage of the silver money occurred late in this reign, during the middle 1690s, under the watchful eye of the Royal Mint's chief, Sir Isaac Newton, famed scholar and mathematician. It allowed all of the old, damaged and worn silver money to be returned to the Mint without loss of value (in other words, at face) to holders of the money that had lost so much of its real, intrinsic value. Bright new silver sixpence coins and shillings and halfcrowns were minted by the millions, to the relief of the public who now had full confidence in the real value of their money. But the Mint also continued to issue golden money of excellent quality. The whiff of change was in the air, however: the Bank of England's paper money, currency with the full backing of the bank (which had been founded in 1694 during this reign and had been growing in influence steadily until it funded the Crown's governing activities) was going to replace these beautiful large gold coins within six decades. Of all the coins of William III, collectors most cherish this splendidly made coin, worth a fortune in buying power in its day. Ex Goldberg Sale 41, May 27, 2007, lot 4522. |  |
Match 5:
| Spink > Auction 23051 | Auction date: 27 January 2024 |
| Lot number: 1148 Price realized: 1,500 GBP (Approx. 1,905 USD / 1,759 EUR) Note: Prices do not include buyer's fees. | |
| Lot description: Charles II (1660-1685), Shilling, 1669 over 6, first laureate and draped bust variety right, rev. four crowned shields cruciform, eight strings to Irish harp, edge obliquely milled. 5.91g, 6h (Marshall 82(b) = Murchison 397 = Rishton 138(b) = Brice = Montagu 810 = Murdoch 602 ["Unique"]; Woodhouse 326; Dalzell 82 = Pywell-Phillips 58 same dies; Shimmin (1983), pp. 232; Bull 515 [R6]; ESC 1031; Spink 3372), evenly circulated and lightly gilt, otherwise strictly fine, the reverse similarly so albeit for softness at Scottish shield, the edge milling residually sharp, an EXCESSIVELY RARE date, and the technical finest of the three we have been privileged to offer in these rooms since 2018. Provenance, "Reader's Rarities", Coin Monthly, February 1971, Reported to the Editor at Coin Monthly, 21 October 1970, ~ From the W J James Esq. Collection ~ , , Corpus:, i) Pywell-Phillips: Spink 257, 30-31 October 2018, lot 58 - "the reverse very softly struck, with general light pitting to surfaces, the portrait and overdate otherwise clear, about fine/poor, but excessively rare"; Lord Hamilton of Dalzell MC, Spink 3, 21 February 1979, lot 82 - "fair, but of the highest rarity" - £260; Spink, by private treaty, 1969; Herbert Alexander Parsons, Second Collection, Glendining, 11-13 May 1954, lot* 549 [part] - "well preserved and excessively rare" - £22.0.0, ii) H Manville, Spink 9, 4 June 1980, lot 54 - "small die rust marks in obverse field, obverse good very fine, reverse nearly extremely fine, attractively toned, and of highest rarity, one of the finest known" - £900; K Woodhouse, Glendining, 11 December 1968, lot 3268 "about extremely fine, only a few specimens known" - £300.0.0, , , , The excessive rarity of this date has been noted by auctioneers since at least the Rishton sale of 1875, but was further noted by George Marshall, pioneer of the study of English Milled coinage in a letter to W G Stearns of Boston Massachusetts, published in the Americana Numismatic Journals:, , "Ward End, near Birmingham, England, July 28, 1842, Dear Sir-: I received in due course, your obliging letter of 16th ultimo, and also the copy of your Half Crown of Charles 2d, date 1668, for which I beg you will accept my best thanks. My friend, Mr. J D Cuff of London, who has one of the best, if not the very best collections of English and Saxon Coins, was so fortunate as to meet with one of this date in August 1838; this with your own are the only ones I have yet heard of, but the fact is that before any publication of my work, no attention has been paid to dates by any previous author except Snelling, whose works though very valuable in many respects, and now very scarce, are not much to be relied upon as to dates. Since the publication of my book, much attention has been given to this subject, and some few dates before unknown, have made their appearance. , , I saw your letter to Dr. Bowditch of 18th March 1840, in answer to some enquiries he had made respecting the early history of the coins of your country, and which letter was read before the Numismatic Society of London on 2d May, 1840 and was published in the Numismatic Chronicle, in October of the same year. I was there first acquainted with the fact of your possessing the Half-Crown of 1668. The only dates which have occurred since my book was published , and which have come to my knowledge, are as follows: - viz: Charles 2d, Crown, 1665; Half Crown 1668; Shilling, 1669; do. 1681 without the Elephant and Castle under the head. William 3d Sixpence without Roses or Feathers on the reverse. William 4th Half Crown and Shilling both dated 1837. These are I believe all in the English series which are known except what are mentioned in my View of the Silver Coin, &c. I remain, dear Sir, Your much obliged servant, GEORGE MARSHALL." , , The number of 1668-dated Halfcrowns now known renders its classification as a more lowly "R2" according to Maurice Bull, although three have passed through our rooms since 2018 in various specialised cabinets. Marshall could sadly only muster 'an electro type of 1668', possibly that which Stearns had sent him from Boston in his sale in 1852 (cf. lot 71 part). He did however manage to purloin an example of the 1669 Shilling (cf. lot 82), which was acquired by William Webster, latterly of Messrs Spink, for Captain Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (1864, lot 397 part]; at whose sale he repeated the feat as a commission agent for John Edward Makon Rishton (SO, 13 July 1875, lot 138 - £3.12.6); wherein for a third time Webster bought it for William Brice. Unbelievably when Brice sold his collection en bloc to Hyman Montagu in 1887, Webster would follow the coin to his new career at Spink where he would handle it for a fourth time in cataloguing it for the Sotheby's dispersals (1896/97); and a fifth time for the John Gloag Murdoch sale (1903/04) where it would be bought for £4.13.0 by Spink commission bidder, the Marquess of Bute. Estimate: £1400 - £2000 |  |
