2,200 high grade samples of mostly scarce, rare or unique specimens from Spain, her colonies and empire ranging from the Visigothic era to the present were sold Oct 21-22 by Aureo & Calico in Barcelona Spain. The Caballero de las Yndias collection is stunning representation of all of the mints that struck coinage for all of the Spanish dynasties throughout all of the rulers and respective types.

The “Caballero de las Yndias” (Knight of the Yndias) collection contains numismatic treasures, the scope and the quality of which have never before brought to the auction block before.

Interestingly, the collection is being sold by an American who inherited it from a Basque ancestor who had emigrated to the US.

Aureo & Calicó’s coin specialist, Eduard Domingo, told the media that “the coins, all of them solid gold, were minted between the first century (Roman) and the 20th century (during the reign of Alfonso XIII)”.

The star piece was without doubt Lot: 1863, a gold coin known as a Centén (due to its worth of 100 reales, an antiquated Spanish currency). It weighs in at almost 11 ounces.

The coin was minted in Segovia in 1609 by order of the then monarch Philip III. It is the largest gold coin ever minted in Spain and was the first of its kind in Europe.
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London auctioneers Morton & Eden expect bids of £30,000 for coins found in field

In the summer of 1465, as the Wars of the Roses raged, an unknown person hid his worldly wealth in a secret location in a Northamptonshire field and went into hiding. He never returned to claim his money.

In 2005 – 540 years later – a metal detectorist stumbled across the hoard of 324 silver coins and alerted the authorities. The British Museum, where the coins were researched and identified as silver groats, purchased 14 of them to be put on show to the public, while the remainder were returned to the metal detectorist who unearthed them and the land-owner on whose land they were found.

The two men have decided to keep 12 coins apiece as mementos, while the remainder will be sold by specialist London auctioneers Morton & Eden on Wednesday, December 2. The 186 coins, which were found in the Brackley area of Northamptonshire, are expected to raise a total of around £30,000, the money to be split equally between them.

After asking permission from the landowner to search the field, the detectorist was thrilled to find five coins on his very first attempt. “I was amazed,” the man said. “They were lying there about a foot below the surface. I couldn’t believe my eyes but I was convinced there were more, so I went back the next day and discovered the rest. There was no sign of a container, so I assume the coins were hidden originally in a cloth bag which obviously had rotted away over the centuries.”

The coins date mostly from the reigns of Henry V (1413-22) and Henry VI (1422-60). They are all silver groats (fourpenny pieces) and are relatively free from corrosion, although clearly, they had been in circulation for some time before they were hidden and had thus received some wear.

Said auctioneer Jeremy Cheek: “When they were in circulation, a silver groat would have been enough to buy a sheep. Thus, the hoard represents the value of a flock of a sheep, perhaps a man’s main asset. As there are no gold coins in the hoard, it does not appear to have been the property of a particularly wealthy person. The gold coin of the time, known as a noble, was worth 6s 8d (1/3 of a pound) which would have represented a lot of wealth for a poor person to hold in one coin. A new type of gold coin, the ‘ryal’ or ‘rose noble’ valued at 10s (1/2 of a pound), was introduced the same year the hoard was deposited. The hoard included two contemporary Scottish groats.”
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The unique Ecuador 1862 50 Francos will be auctioned in January as part of Heritage’s Signature World Coin Auction in New York.

NGC recently certified the unique Ecuador 1862 50 Francos struck in gold. This classic rarity of 19th-century South American coinage is an experimental denomination that conforms to the European coinage standards of the era. It is graded NGC AU 55.

The coin first appeared in published texts in 1956, offered by Robert Friedberg in the November issue of The Numismatist from that year. Scholars believe that he acquired the coin from the Virgil Brand estate. After four more auction appearances between 1957 and 1976, it was sold into a private collection where it has remained since.

Although originally listed in Standard Catalog of World Coins as “unique” alongside the regular issue coinage of Ecuador, it was re-catalogued as a pattern coin in 1986, and this reference number is provided on the NGC certification holder. Although its exact origin and occasion for issue are uncertain, a related 5 Francos silver coin was struck for circulation in Ecuador in 1858. That coin contained 25 grams of 900 fine silver — identical weight and fineness to the 5 Francs and other crown-sized European silver coinage.

Some speculate that the coin was produced at the Paris Mint because an “A” mintmark appears beneath the bust of Bolivar. The quality of die engraving, however, seems incompatible with the superior work of Albert Desire Barre, who engraved for the Paris mint at the time, and best evidence suggests that dies were executed in Ecuador. The coin’s obverse shows a profile bust of South American liberator Simón Bolívar, and the reverse displays the coat of arms of Ecuador, above QUITO, the capital city and location of Ecuador’s mint.

After being off the market for three and a half decades, this coin will be auctioned on January 3–4, 2010, as part of Heritage’s Signature World Coin Auction in New York.