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New Talers
Zohar
Posts: 6,676 ✭✭✭✭✭
These are new additions - some purchased for the core collection, and a couple for future resale/trade. I will list them by eye appeal (in my view) and importance for the set.
1610 KB Matthias II (1612-1619) Taler (as King of Hungary)
DAV-3051
Kremnitz Mint
PCGS AU-58
This is now one of the centerpieces of the collection. Scarce in such nice quality and rarely found on the auction circuit. I truly thought this had MS in it as the image doesnt capture the quality. These Talers are struck crudely and do not come nicer than this.
1719 Charles VI (1711-1740) Taler
DAV-1053
Hall Mint
NGC MS-62
Lustrous Taler which has upside in the grade for sure. I have another 62 which is inferior when compared to this one.
1725 Charles VI (1711-1740) Taler
DAV-1054 (Fatter bust)
Hall Mint
NGC MS-62
Nicely detailed and toned piece. Older Charles VI bust.
Bishpric State of Olmutz
1706 Carl III Herzog von Lothringen (1695-1711) Taler
DAV-1211
NGC AU-53
Possible overdate? Anyway a tougher date/type. Will aim to upgrade in future.
Bishopric State of Salzburg
1627 Paris of Lodron (1619-1653) Taler
DAV-3504
ANACS XF-40
Nice original piece of the earlier type. Purchased for resale/trade.
1610 KB Matthias II (1612-1619) Taler (as King of Hungary)
DAV-3051
Kremnitz Mint
PCGS AU-58
This is now one of the centerpieces of the collection. Scarce in such nice quality and rarely found on the auction circuit. I truly thought this had MS in it as the image doesnt capture the quality. These Talers are struck crudely and do not come nicer than this.
1719 Charles VI (1711-1740) Taler
DAV-1053
Hall Mint
NGC MS-62
Lustrous Taler which has upside in the grade for sure. I have another 62 which is inferior when compared to this one.
1725 Charles VI (1711-1740) Taler
DAV-1054 (Fatter bust)
Hall Mint
NGC MS-62
Nicely detailed and toned piece. Older Charles VI bust.
Bishpric State of Olmutz
1706 Carl III Herzog von Lothringen (1695-1711) Taler
DAV-1211
NGC AU-53
Possible overdate? Anyway a tougher date/type. Will aim to upgrade in future.
Bishopric State of Salzburg
1627 Paris of Lodron (1619-1653) Taler
DAV-3504
ANACS XF-40
Nice original piece of the earlier type. Purchased for resale/trade.
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Comments
I wonder why the portraits of Charles VI show him with a frown. Did he have a severe under-bite, or was he just always pissed off.
The condition is known as Habsburg jaw, Habsburg lip or Austrian Lip due to its prevalence in that bloodline. The trait is easily traceable in portraits of Habsburg family members. This has provided tools for people interested in studying genetics and pedigree analysis.
World Collection
British Collection
German States Collection
In other Hapsburg news - the eldest son to the last emperor, Otto von Hapsburg, passed away today aged 98 - link
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8 Reales Madness Collection
I give away money. I collect money.
I don’t love money . I do love the Lord God.
By SETH LIPSKY
The death of Otto von Habsburg takes from us one of the most admirable figures of the 20th century. He was the son of the last emperor of Austria-Hungary, and died on Monday at the age of 98. I did not know him well, but I had two memorable encounters with him—including one in which, I like to joke, I permitted Kurt Waldheim to be elected president of Austria rather than break an agreement on newspaper ground-rules.
I met Habsburg sometime around 1978. The story demonstrates just how ignorant a graduate of Harvard University can be. I was then the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal Asia, working at its Hong Kong bureau, and received a phone call from the Journal's celebrated Tokyo bureau chief, Eduardo Lachica. He wanted a favor.
A friend of Eddie's, a woman in the fashion business in Tokyo it seemed, was traveling in China with her father. The father was running in West Germany for a seat in the European Parliament and wanted to meet with a group of foreign correspondents when they passed through Hong Kong. Eddie asked whether I would arrange such a lunch.
"I'd be delighted, Eddie," I said. "What's the fellow's name?"
"Otto Habsburg," Mr. Lachica replied.
"How do you spell that?"
"With a 'b.'"
I made a note of it and set up a gathering for a week or so hence. One of the persons I invited was the publisher at the Asian Journal at the time, Peter Kann, who would go on to become chairman of Dow Jones & Co. in America. Mr. Kann said he couldn't make it. But as I was leaving for lunch on the appointed day, I dropped by his office and asked whether he might be free after all. He said he wasn't, that in fact he had two competing lunches.
I shrugged and started to walk off when Mr. Kann looked up from his desk and said, "With whom are you having lunch"
"Otto von Habsburg."
"What?!" Mr. Kann exclaimed.
"Otto Habsburg," I repeated.
"Do you know who that is?" the publisher asked, rising from behind his desk.
"Yes," I replied. "He's the father of one of Eddie Lachica's girlfriends."
"He's the Holy Roman Emperor!" Mr. Kann exclaimed.
He instructed his secretary to cancel both of his lunches, and we dashed to the restaurant where Mr. Kann, normally an aloof sort, suddenly became uncharacteristically deferential. He addressed our guest as "your excellency," and ventured "I believe you might have known my father."
When Habsburg discovered that Mr. Kann's father was the historian Robert Kann, who wrote a seminal history of the Habsburg empire, he became highly animated. The Holy Roman Emperor and Mr. Kann spent the lunch lost in conversation at one end of a long table, while the rest of us fell under the spell of Habsburg's daughter Michaela.
That would have been the end of it, save for the fact that Habsburg got elected to the European Parliament in 1979. When I was eventually transferred to Brussels for The Wall Street Journal Europe's editorial page, I looked him up. We had our reunion in the spring of 1986 at the Brussels Hilton's Maison du Beouf, a restaurant specializing in American prime ribs.
There were five of us at the table, and one of the reasons we were eager to see him is that Austrian elections were only two weeks off. The former secretary general of the United Nations, Kurt Waldheim, was running for president. He had recently been exposed as having worn the Nazi uniform in Yugoslavia during World War II.
It didn't take the table of journalists long to bring the conversation around to Austria's pending election, but Habsburg was reticent in his comments about Austria's national politics. He was, by dint of his heroic stand against both Hitler and the Communists over the course of his long life, undoubtedly the most popular man in Austria. Yet he was in exile from what might have been his realm, and liked to be correct about it.
"So, your excellency," I said during a lull in the conversation, "what do you make of the speculation that Waldheim, during part of his time at the United Nations, was a Soviet spy?"
That's when the Holy Roman Emperor turned to me, put down his fork and said, "I don't have the slightest doubt that Waldheim was a Soviet spy throughout his entire time at the United Nations." He surmised that the Soviet regime had known about Waldheim's service with the Nazis in Yugoslavia and had been using its knowledge against him throughout the post-war years.
"Your excellency," I said, "do you mind if I quote you?"
"Well," he said, "we did agree that this lunch would be off the record, did we not?"
I acknowledged that we had.
"Well then," he said, "let's leave it like that."
So we did, and Waldheim went on to win the election.
The episode was only typical of Habsburg's savvy and his punctiliousness about his exile. It was one thing for him to educate a callow young newspaper editor in private. It would have been another for him to have made such a charge in public and on the eve of the election. One can only imagine, given Habsburg's popularity in Austria, what an impact it might have had.
It will be written that Otto Habsburg lived and died a democrat, but sometimes I wonder. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that one morning, one of Habsburg's aides in the European Parliament came to him and asked for the afternoon off. Habsburg asked why. The aide confessed somewhat sheepishly that he wanted to watch a soccer game.
Habsburg consented, then inquired. "Who is playing?"
"Austria and Hungary," his staffer replied.
Habsburg is said to have looked up from his desk and asked: "Against whom?"
Mr. Lipsky is editor of the New York Sun.
This piece has been toning patiently in an envelope. Looking at Ferdinand's armor detail in hand emphasizes the technology available at the time to accomplish so much on a coin blank.
Imaged upon purchase a while back.
Today: