LE Bruun Sale Part IV
pruebas
Posts: 5,094 ✭✭✭✭✭
I only attended day 2 of the sale. @MrEureka attended day 1, so maybe he can comment on that day.
Wow! What coins! Incredible quality combined with incredible rarity marked this installment of the LE Bruun sale. Of the 266 lots today, 90% were purchased by one bidder! Competition was intense. I managed one lot, though I did have to stretch a bit (not unusual these days).
I think only one lot today failed to sell. Most were sold way over high estimate, often double or triple. At least one rare gold medal (that of Mr. Bruun's father and mother, purported unique in gold), sold for about melt. Personally, I really thought this medal was an excellent "remembrance" of Bruun and the sale, but it must have been too much gold and too little interest.
A majority of the lots were graded by NGC. I thought they were pretty tough on the grades and I suspect more than one lot will end up regraded for higher numbers or punctuation.
Many of this sale's coins were related to the Danish colonies. The Danish West Indies (in North America) and Danish India. The Danish West Indies was eventually sold to the US and is now called the US Virgin Islands.
When the sale was first posted, I was mainly interested in two lots. The first was the Greenland Dollar and the second was the Danish abolition of slavery in North America medal.
Since most of the whales looking for Greenland Dollars had had their fill over the last year, and @Boosibri told me he was out, I contemplated going after this piece. It was a very high quality piece, and we know that Bruun had the money and access a hundred+ years ago to buy the best available. And at that time, many good coins were available. But in the end, I decided that there would still be too much interest and competition thus I would leave empty-handed.
So I went after the Slavery medal. This medal is available in silver, gold-plated, and bronze. The Bruun example was bronze, completely unmolested. I believe it to be the finest known, or at least among the top of the finest. Not that there exists very many of them. It is quite a scarce medal, so I did expect some manageable competition. The bid started out low online (as did most of the lots in the sale). Bidding progressed and I hit my max bid and I got outbid. I decided to try one final cut bid and I won it--at my absolute max! The result was an extra $4000 out of pocket, but hey, it's an important piece.
Only this evening, after I had won the lot, did I find that there was an interesting Coin Week article about the medal. Worth a read.
Those of you who know me know that while I collect Mexican coins, I often dabble in medals, US, Mexican, British, and French. This will be my first Danish medal. And very important to North America as well as the history of slavery.
Here is the medal (NGC MS62, though I swear it could go 63):
Comments
Absolutely lovely pickup! Super details!
Great write up an outstanding purchase. I’m glad you’re able to win one lot away from Galactus.
Latin American Collection
Actually he didn’t bid on that lot. All my competition was online.
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.)
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
You and I might use different bidder numbers if we were representing multiple buyers. But this person, I think, was trying to fool the online folks (which was most everyone) by them hearing different bidders winning lots.
By no means do I think his winnings are going to multiple buyers.
Could be.
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
That scoundrel! That’s a great idea! 😂
I'm BACK!!! Used to be Billet7 on the old forum.
@pruebas
Congrats on the rare addition.
I did not know that you dabbled in British and French coinage or do you concentrate mainly on medals?
@MrEureka
Congrats on the additions…
Overall, I thought the results were fairly strong with most exceeding expectations. I suspect the lots would need to have been seen to appreciate the strengths and those that may have fell a tad shy of expectations.
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.
Nice medal @pruebas
I just love the arrangements made in the will by Mr Bruun.
Thanks for the reporting on this sale @pruebas and congrats on your win. Really interesting that one bidder dominated it.
Thank you.
You know, I kind of miss the days of in-person bidding. Sure, remote internet bidding is quick, cheap, and convenient, but there are distinct advantages of being there in the room, with old friends, eating auction room food (or not), slugging it out, and especially seeing where things go.
The “old” Stacks and Bowers & Merena/ANR firms used to hold lots of auctions in NYC. Not so much anymore.
Awesome write up and medal @pruebas. Congrats on a really cool addition.
I miss it too and I never even experienced it. I’d imagine being there as a kid with no money, and now that I can finally play, everyone has moved on…
Maybe it’ll come back into fashion?
I don’t think so. The auction companies are making bank this way (no room rental, catering, armored transport, and staff travel charges).
I suspect they ran this “European” auction from New York thinking they would attract many North American bidders with this material (even though it was priced in Euros).
They may have done so, but those bidders mostly weren’t in person in the auction room. It could just as easily have been held in “Griffin Studio in Sunny Costa Mesa” and saved them a ton of money.
And saving a ton of money should really help dictate reasonable buyers’ premiums or at a minimum, create a more competitive environment among the auction houses. And considering the volume of offerings and that increase which seems significant… should also keep buyers’ premiums at or below 20%. Sadly, none of this seems to be in the cards.
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.