May 2004 Coin Newsletter

By Steve Hill

Welcome, Cyberfriends, to the May 2004 edition of the Numismatic repor. April has been a very busy month at Spink. The second Numismatic Circular of the year has proved to be a popular edition with over 60% of all the coins sold, with the majority in the British hammered and milled sections. What is left over has now gone online elsewhere on this website. On the 15th of April we held our second coin auction of 2004, which had heavy participation from dealers and collectors alike. There really was something for everyone in this auction with some very interesting British coins with good hammered gold and silver and mixed milled. The sale began well with a very low rate of unsold lots and some impressive prices reached for the ancient coinage .

Lot 142:This Henry VI Noble of York had an impressive provenance
and the £5,600 hammer reflected this

This set the trend for the British which opened with some strong prices for hammered gold like the York Mint noble of Henry VI lot 142 which had an impressive provenance and fetched more than double high estimate at £5,600 hammer. This trend continued with, for example, lot 147 the Henry VIII Sovereign which climbed to £6,800 hammer over a high estimate of £3,500. The Mary sovereign went for nearly double it's high estimate at £11,500 hammer and the following Elizabeth piece fetched £12,500 hammer against a high estimate of £8,000. The milled gold that followed generally sold for closer to the estimates, with many achieving just above the high figure. The next section of hammered silver and gold continued this trend with most selling around the estimates or just above. The Half-George noble of Henry VIII, only the third specimen known, fetched £5,500 hammer even though it was in quite poor condition having suffered from time spent buried in the ground. One of the best results was for the exceptional Mary Angel lot 231 which went for more than double its high estimate at £9,000 hammer. The other British coins continued in the same vein with more or less every lot sold.

Lot 226: Only the third specimen known of the
Henry VIII Half George Noble fetched £5,500 hammer

Lot 231:This impressive Mary Angel fetched more
than double its high estimate at £9,000 hammer

These were followed by a group of gold coins of the Low Countries which were also received very well; some Chinese followed but these were a little out of vogue; however Hong Kong by comparison sold very well indeed and a British Trade Dollar of the Bombay Mint dated 1921 sold for an impressive £15,000 hammer, double the high estimate. Other foreign and Islamic coinage followed, which also performed well, lot 518 the Greek 100 Drachma of 1935 fetched £8,200 hammer and the accompanying 20 Drachma £6,000 hammer. One of the highlights of the foreign was a very rare gold 100 Lei coin of Romania, which reached a blistering £14,000 hammer. A group of medallions finished this successful auction. The whole sale totaled some £530,135 hammer far exceeding the estimates of £338,870 to £417,405.

Lot 500: This extremely rare 1921 Bombay Mint British Trade Dollar
climbed to an impressive £15,000 hammer”

Lot 518: This very rare 1935 gold 100 Drachma of Greece fetched £8,200 hammer

Lot 532 One of the highest prices in the sale was for this
Romanian gold 100 Lei which reached £14,000 hammer

Soon after this sale, Jeremy Cheek and I prepared for our next coin convention trip to the Far East, to Japan where we took a table at our second ever Tokyo Coin Convention now in it’s 15th year. Held at the Royal Park Hotel in Tokyo’s business district this show was held over the May day bank holiday weekend at the end of April which happens to be Golden week in Japan. After taking off in torrential rain in London, Tokyo greeted us with pure sunshine for the whole trip and we had a very successful convention being welcomed back by Japanese collectors and dealers alike. We had a wonderful evening spent with the sponsors of the show Taisei Coins of Tokyo who treated the visiting foreigners to an evening of food, drink and karaoke. Tokyo really is a wonderful city especially at night when the electronic illuminations and city lights come on coating the whole skyline in a colourful glow of pure clarity with the Tokyo Tower as its centre-piece. The City though seemingly cramped in every available space is run very efficiently and the people are wonderful with the utmost respect and hospitality towards each other. We look forward to visiting this show next year.

Spink at the Tokyo Coin Convention

Looking to the month of May we are busily preparing for our July auction now and the consignments have been building up gradually. At the moment it seems everyone wants to buy and not many people want to sell, so it has been difficult to find material and in fact we were quite lucky in Japan to be offered some items for this auction. This is good news as Japan was traditionally seen especially in the Eighties as a place to sell coins and not to buy. Thankfully this trend is changing it would seem. We have a number of good English coins for this auction so we are going to catalogue these before the end of this month in hesitation of this sale. If you are of course considering selling your coins then please do contact us for an opinion.

At the end of May Jeremy Cheek and I are scheduled to attend the Long Beach Coin Convention which is held over the first weekend in June in California; our first one ever and we will be away until the 7th June, therefore the next edition of this column will not appear until after this date. By this time the next edition of the Numismatic Circular will be available and this will contain a wonderful group of English crowns and some high value British gold coins. There is also an extremely rare Roman gold aureus of Magnia Urbica minted in Rome which is the only physical evidence in history of the wife of the Roman Emperor Carinus in the year 283. The coin is in superb condition and is extremely rare.

Until the next edition of this column appears enjoy your coins



Stephen Hill
Associate Director
Coins