Major Auctions: The 1975 Superior ANA sale

Boosibri

There are hundreds of auctions, collectors, discoveries and notable events in numismatic history which are forgotten once the generation experiencing the events has passed. As I have spent hours researching the provenances of my collection, and diving into sales from the past, I thought it would be a worthwhile effort to document these sales and the collectors behind them for the benefit of this group.

It would be difficult to find a better sale to begin with than the 1975 ANA sale held by Superior in Los Angeles. This sales was stacked with a phenomenal group of US coins, but what we will focus on is the World, and specifically Latin American group, which was made up of the FCC Boyd collection, though not noted as such in the sale. The collection itself was formed in the first half of the 20th century, with dealer Wayte Raymond building the majority of the collection. Images in Raymond's "Silver Dollars of North and South America" generally use pictures of the coins in Boyd's collection.

Boyd had a considerable US collection which was sold in 1945-1946 by Abe Kosoff, billed as “The Worlds Greatest Collection” with the exception of the patterns which were sold directly to King Farouk of Egypt. Boyd passed away in 1958 with the collection being held by his widow until being purchased by John J Ford and consigned to auction.

A bit on FCC Boyd from Dave Bowers can be found here: https://stacksbowers.com/meet-fcc-boyd/

As far as the sale itself, the Boyd lots appear to begin with the World Crowns, lot 1728, through 2090 and the Mexican and world gold, lots 2093 - 2834.

Link to auction on the Newman Portal: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/auctionlots?AucCoId=511782&AuctionId=521897

A few highlights of the collection:

1781 - 1768-So Chile 8 Reales
1787 - 1828 Coquimbo Peso - the Wayte Raymond coin, became the Lissner coin. Finest or second finest along with the Newcomer/Millennia coin.
1794 - 1759-NR Colombia 8 Reales
1943 - 1699-Mo L Presentation 8 Reales
1947 - 1724-Mo 8 Reales unholed
1950 - 1730-Mo 8 Reales unholed
1957 - 1732-Mo 8 Reales one of the finest
1979 - 1999 - Large group on very rare Mexican patterns
2075 - Spain 1635 50 Reales
2076 - Spain 1659 50 Reales
2502 - 1873-G Mexican 20 Peso very rare

Major buyers in the sale included Don Canaparo (who sold coins eventually to the Goldbergs for the Millennia collection), the Craigs, Irving Goodman, Lissner, Pat Johnston and Almanzar.

Two in my collection:

The finest 1840-R Argentina Rebel Peso - PCGS MS61

1816-So Chile 8 Reales - PCGS MS64

Abuelo

Nice!

MrEureka

@Boosibri said:
There are hundreds of auctions, collectors, discoveries and notable events in numismatic history which are forgotten once the generation experiencing the events has passed.

You sure know how to make a guy feel old! I still have the copy of this catalog that I received in the mail in 1975!

Boosibri

@MrEureka said:

@Boosibri said:
There are hundreds of auctions, collectors, discoveries and notable events in numismatic history which are forgotten once the generation experiencing the events has passed.

You sure know how to make a guy feel old! I still have the copy of this catalog that I received in the mail in 1975!

Surely you were on leave for summer holidays from third grade.