Best Of

Technically it’s Thursday 😂

Here’s a fun piece from Guatemala, 8R, 1771. All the Guatemala pillars are kinda messy, the minting was very crude, but the last years are even morso. The flans were cut down due to silver inflation, but they decided not to change the die sizes, so here we are, elements falling off the edges 😂

Also, many crude elements, the assayer initial is HUGE and probably hand carved. I love it, a great little piece of history. Being the final year of production is icing on the cake.

I suppose I’ll just add a few things. First, the venue was lovely. Second, there weren’t many people in attendance. And third, the one dominant bidder mentioned by Pruebas was bidding with more than a few bidder numbers, so I would not assume that any one collector ended up with anything approaching 90% of the coins. As for my purchases, I got one yesterday and one today. The ducat sort of speaks for itself. The 1908 Norway 2 Ore is a pattern for the design that went into production in 1909, and is by far the finer of only two in private hands. (The other example was sold in 1984 and hasn’t resurfaced since, AFAIK.)