Coins

A metal detector enthusiast who pleaded guilty to five counts of fraud has been jailed for six months for selling modern fakes.

A HOARD of James I gold unites, found in the wall of an Oxfordshire cellar 30 years ago, is expected to sell for £50,000 at London specialist auctioneers Morton & Eden on June 9-10.

The unique Russian Catherine the Great 1755 gold 20 rouble coin sold for a record price of £1.55m hammer at St James's Auctions on November 6.

A gold pattern Chinese coin picturing Chang Tso Lin (1875-1928) was dubbed 'one of the rarest coins in the world' by A.H. Baldwin & Sons and Ma Tak Wo Numismatic Co Ltd who offered it for sale in Hong Kong on August 28.

POLICE are on the lookout for a gang of thieves who stole a chest of antique coins worth over £150,000 from London auctioneers Dix Noonan Webb. They are believed to be the same people who targeted dealers in Hatton Garden late last year.

SPINK have set a new record for an English silver coin with the £180,000 they took for a 1663 Charles II silver Crown on September 27.

On September 26 Baldwin’s Auctions obtained £210,000 (plus 15% buyer’s premium) for this unique gold medallic triple unite of Charles I – proof that the rarities in the English coin market are now attaining trophy status.

ATG's pioneering live bidding service went East on August 31 - participating in the sale of Oriental and Asian Coins, Medals, and Banknotes conducted in Hong Kong by Baldwin's in association with MA Tak Wo Numismatic Co. Ltd of Hong Kong and Monetarium Pte Ltd of Singapore.

There was nothing dull or predictable about the coin sale at Spink on June 29 when an expectant crowd gathered to witness the sale of one of the rarest of English Medieval coins: the gold Double Leopard florin of Edward III which was minted for only a few months in 1344.

Following its recent discovery by a metal detectorist in the south of England, one of Britain’s rarest medieval coins is to be sold by London numismatists Spink.

Hidden away in a bank vault for over 80 years, the fabled Damon Collection of rare coins, medals and bank notes will fall under the hammer in March.

DREWEATT Neate’s sale on 23rd March at Donnington Priory offered a 100-lot section of coins, banknotes and medals which produced a 100 per cent take-up.

The London Coin Fair (Frances & Howard Simmons) took place on February 5. Of the three of these fairs each year this one is not expected to be the most active. This time the reverse applied.

JUST before the onslaught of numismatic sales in London, there have been a number of interesting dispersals abroad.

RIGHT: London auctioneers Spink’s pre-sale billing of this Anglo Saxon gold penny as ”the most important discovery in British numismatics for many years” gained tangible endorsement last week when they sold it for £200,000 – a new record for an English coin.

IT’S been billed as the most important discovery in British numismatics for many years. Now the London auction house Spink are to offer the first newly-discovered Anglo-Saxon gold penny to come to light for almost a century.

DURING an otherwise routine probabe valuation in a village near Saffron Walden, John Foster from Stansted Mountfitchet auctioneers Sworders discovered a box of coins tucked away in the back of a cupboard. On closer inspection he found an album of East Anglian banknotes which had probably been collected in the 1950s and 1960s for only a few pounds.

THE London coin auction is indeed evolving. We have the announcement by Stephen Fenton of the birth of St James’s Auctions. Their first sale is scheduled for Wednesday October 13 at the De Vere Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn Street. It seems that this promises to be a very prestigious sale.

NEWS has come in of the theft of a New Zealand ‘Waitangi’ crown. This one should prove to be particularly easy to identify because it is the rare proof – not the ‘ordinary’ issue. 

THE energy with which Spink pursue their business was made manifest on July 15 when they crammed in another sale which has not been part of their auction schedule in recent years. The total take was £250,850 and, although it was a 519-lot general sale, it offered several homogeneous sections. In all, it taught us really quite a lot about the state of the London coin market.