Huntington Collection Auction Part 1 - VERY Short Report!

MrEureka

Tonight, the first 1000 coins from the Huntington collection were auctioned in Madrid. I am sad to report that the market for Spanish coins remains healthy, and I was only able to buy about 20 coins. The auction room was packed with perhaps 200 bidders. Perhaps they are the 200 remaining Spaniards with jobs?

BTW, the most expensive coin in the sale, the 10 Excellentes, hammered at 450K euros, the starting bid. IMHO, the opener was high enough that getting it sold at any price was a great success.

TwoKopeiki

I went after the uniface die trial for the 4 Reales, but my budget held me back from being more aggressive. Glad to hear you were able to add to your collection, Andy. Perhaps one of these days you'll break down and get yourself a camera you can use to take photos

bidask

Hi Mr Eureka,

How many american dealers were there that you estimate?

Great to hear you thought the market for spanish coins was healthy!

Dennis88

Thanks for the quick report. Even though I don't know much about Spanish coins I did look at a preview at some point and thought that there were some great coins in there.

Dennis

pruebas

I think people with money do not want to hold cash, stocks, or real estate and are looking for places to park that money safely and secretly. Certain Russians, Chinese, Colombians, and others have been doing it for years.

Roman, that piece is not a die trial and it was struck in Spain, not the new world. Why the 4R instead of the 8R? Since when do you collect 4Rs?

Word has it that some of the Latin American coins from the collection will be auctioned later in the year.

TwoKopeiki

<< <i>Roman, that piece is not a die trial and it was struck in Spain, not the new world. Why the 4R instead of the 8R? Since when do you collect 4Rs? >>



Stephen, I assumed it was struck in Spain. Why do you think it wasn't an obverse die trial? Hard to judge by the catalog description, since it doesn't even mention the metal composition.

To answer your question, the 4R appealed more to me than the 8R offered.

pruebas

When an event caused a new coinage design to be needed (i.e. change of king), a complete set of new punches would be sent from Spain to each colony to be used by local labor to make new dies for the new coins. This kept the designs uniform throughout the empire. In addition, samples ("muestras"), thin uniface images of both the obverse and reverse designs would be sent along with the punches showing how the final coin design was to look. The samples were generally very thin silver for the silver issues and brass for the gold issues. There were separate obverse and reverse samples, with the reverse having a mintmark "N" and assayer "NN".

In addition to silver/brass, these also exist in pewter/white metal as well as lead, but I am unsure of the purpose of them in these metals. Surely lead pieces would not be sent from Spain, and maybe they were truly the die trials made in a colonial mint after the dies were created. But I have seen a pewter piece with the N mintmark/NN assayer, meaning it probably came from Spain (perhaps to save money over using silver?). It could also be that certain series were in silver/brass and certain were in pewter/white metal. I have not seen enough pieces to come to any conclusions. Example from my collection.

Imagine a presentation box full of a complete denomination set of all coinage samples, both obverse and reverse. Such a box still exists in a South American museum today. I forget which one. But most pieces show up loose, and reverses seem to be much rarer.

So in this particular case, the lot you (and I!) were bidding on was a uniface obverse sample (in silver, dated 1770) for a colonial 4R for the first bust coinage of 1772. We cannot say with absolute certainty which colony it was sent to, or perhaps not sent at all and remained in Spain.

Occasionally one of the colonies had a design change and the others didn't. In that case, samples would be easy to ID as to their intended colony.

Edited for clarity.

TwoKopeiki

This is great information, Stephen. Definitely have a better understanding of the process now.

pruebas

By the way, look at the lot previous to the one I link to above and see an obverse silver muestra for a Ferdinand VII Colonial 2R (dated 1811 for a design that started in 1812).

TwoKopeiki

That's pretty cool. Is there a reference that describes the process in either English or Spanish? Official mint records?

Analyst

‭The short report from MrEureka is interesting. I am grateful.

‭More coins from the Huntington Collection will be sold on March 6, 2013. Please read:

‭Auctions in March


‭insightful10 gmail

ColinCMR

Sounds fun, 20 is a great haul!