November 2005 Coin Newsletter

This newsletter is emailed out to interested clients on a monthly basis. If you would like to be added to our coins mailing list, please register online and "opt-in" to email updates.

The London coin fair on Saturday 5 November was busy, and for all or at least part of the day there were nine of us from Spink in attendance. This might seem excessive, but we were offering ancient, English, Islamic, and general foreign coins, as well as commemorative medals and books, and so all areas were covered. Sales were well up, over double the previous show, so the event was considered a success. The British coin and medal market in general is still buoyant.

On the auction front the year is far from over yet. The catalogues for the banknote auction in Hong Kong, and the medal auction and the two coin auctions in London, are now all printed, and the coins have been well viewed already. A preview of the Colin Adams collection of Halfcrowns on 1 December was given in last month's newsletter, and a preview of the general sale (30th November) - which includes the Ivan Buck collection of hammered silver coins - is given below. There was great interest in these two collections at the show, and many collectors told us they were keeping their powder dry in readiness for the auctions. This week we send the last Numismatic Circular of 2005 to the printers. As well as the usual offering of ancient and English coins and numismatic books there will be a good selection of over 60 commemorative medals. This will be sent out to subscribers, after the auctions, in early December.

Gathering material for the first sales of 2006 is already well under way. Two single owner collections have already been consigned for sale in February and March, as well as the Jerry Remik collection of British Commonwealth coins for later in the year. Details of these will be published in the December newsletter. Consignments for the general sale at the end of March, which already includes a good selection of foreign coins, can be accepted until the end of January.

The Ivan Buck Collection – Introduction
This very attractive collection of 937 English silver coins covers a series which has long been of great interest to collectors and academic numismatists alike. It commences with the short cross coinage under Henry II and, running through to the reign of Charles I, incorporates a strong representation of the two series in which Ivan Buck held particular expertise – silver Groats (357 coins), and the coinage of Henry VI (372 coins) – into a pleasing and rounded collection, with particular emphasis on coins of the 15th century.

The sale starts with a small run of short cross, long cross and Edward I pennies. Collected by mint, these are almost complete and include 19 of the 21 short cross mints (Lichfield and Norwich only are lacking) and all 20 long cross mints and 12 Edward I mints. The Edward series includes two Groats (lots 41-42), both purchased from metal detector finders with whom Ivan Buck maintained good contacts. The first, a particularly rare variety, has a refurbished crown and was only known to North from a plaster cast (SCBI39, 5). The coins of Edward III include an excellent ‘chain mail’ Groat (lot 82) and all three Calais denominations, Groat, Halfgroat and Penny, and those of Richard II an exceptional Halfgroat on a large flan (lot 87), also a metal detector find.

An early highlight of the collection is the group of four light coinage Groats of Henry IV (lots 92-95). The first example is a handsome and unpublished example of the difficult type I, in the style of Richard II, and two of the others are from the famous Reigate Hoard.

The coinage of Henry VI is exceptionally strong. Ivan Buck specialized in coins of this reign for over forty years, and he has been extremely successful in bringing together not only the known rarities such as the three Groats and Halfgroat of the unmarked issue (lots 265-268), but also the fascinating runs of mules between coinages on which the sequencing of the issues depends.He was particularly interested in the die-sinkers’ errors, corrected and uncorrected, of which this collection includes an unrivalled representation. In his book ‘Medieval English Groats’, Greenlight Publishing, 2000, which was awarded the Royal Niumismatic Society’s Lhotka Memorial Prize for 2001, Ivan expanded on this theme, pp. 19-24. Many of the plates in “Medieval English Coins’ are illustrated from coins in his own collection, including all the Henry VI groats. In order to give a feel for the breadth and variety of the series we have set out below a concordance between the lot numbers in the sale and those coins illustrated in the book.

Many of the rarest silver coins of the medieval series are not the Groats but the smaller denominations. The annulet York Halfgroat, though chipped (lot 121), is one of only six known and an unrecorded die combination, while the rosette-mascle London Penny (lot 159) is the first to be offered for over forty years. There appears to be no record of another cross-pellet Farthing (lot 281) appearing on the market in living memory. The coins of Henry VI include a small group of Anglo-Gallic (lots 285-291), and ten coins struck during his brief restoration in 1470-71 (lots 331-339). These latter include Groats of all three mints, London, Bristol and York, and a remarkable mule York/London Penny, quite unpublished and only the second known (lot 339).

The 72 groats of Edward IV in this sale provide an unusually comprehensive group. An exceptional piece is the very elusive heavy coinage Groat of type IV, struck just before the weight standard was reduced from 60 grains to 48 grains (lot 299). Many of these coins are also illustrated in ‘Medieval English Groats’ and come from the Norweb collection, cf. lot 302.

The collection also includes a fine set of six Groats of Richard III. The first, with mintmark boar’s head over sun and rose on obverse (lot 356), bears the name Edward but is now associated with the indenture of 20 July 1483 with Robert Brackenbury. It is only the second recorded overmarked example from this obverse die. The following coin (lot 357), a first issue piece of Richard III, was similarly overmarked on the same occasion. The Richard III groats close with an unusually fine example of type 3, with pellet below bust (lot 361).

The collection concludes with a representative selection of early Tudor coins, including three Groats of Edward VI, and a good run of Charles I Tower Halfcrowns and Shillings from the Messing Hoard, a civil war hoard found at Messing, less than ten miles from Braintree in 1975, cf. lot 417.

Ivan Buck was popular and unusually well connected in both numismatic and metal detecting fields. While many of the coins in this collection were purchased from mainstream dealers and auctions, many also were offered to him privately and are now offered publicly for the first time. Ivan’s tickets are sold with the coins, and as many of the coins as possible have been illustrated as a matter of record.

Kind regards,

The Coin Department