The Goldberg’s will be holding a World and Ancient Coin Auction on October 29th and 30th in Beverley Hills CA, and as with all of their sales, interest is high. The online catelog has been posted and there are several notable highlights.

The sale will be held in two sessions; Thursday the 29th Session 1, Ancient Coins & Antiquities and Friday the 30th, Session 2, World Coins.

The Top 10 rarest items are as follows:

1) Lot 1501 Ireland. Penny, 1938. Struck in bronze, Harp, with “eire” to left, date 1938 to right. Reverse: Hen left with chicks, 1d above, value in Gaelic in exergue, small PM to upper right (initials of Percy Metcalfe) toothed border both sides. The rarest coin in the Irish Series. PCGS graded MS-65 Brown. .

The design differs from the previous issue which was for the “Free State of Ireland” and stated that to the left of the harp in Gaelic.
This piece was the only known specimen until one further piece was discovered in a safe at the Irish Treasury Department in Dublin. That specimen is now on prominent display at the National Museum of Dublin, in Colm Barracks, Dublin, Ireland. Therefore this is still the only specimen available to collectors of the series as the prototype piece for the design of the Irish Republic Coinage. The design was used unchanged for the Penny from 1940 until Decimalisation in 1971.
Estimated Value $70,000 – 80,000.

2) Lot 118 Octavian and Julius Caesar. Gold Aureus (6.84 g) minted in Italy, 43 BC. Bare head right of Octavian. Reverse: Laureate head right of Caesar. Cr. 490/2; CRI 132. Striking irregularity. Very Rare. Very Fine with an excellent portrait of Julius Caesar. .

In assembling a set of the “Twelve Caesars” in gold, the two most difficult to find with appealing portraits are Julius Caesar and Otho.
Estimated Value $30,000 – 40,000.

3) Lot 86 Judaea. The Bar Kokhba War, 132-135 CE. Large Bronze (32. 5 mm.; 21.19 g), dated Year Two, struck 133/134 CE. Filleted olive wreath, Palaeo-Hebrew inscription in two lines within (“Shim’on”). Reverse: Twin-handled, fluted amphora; Palaeo-Hebrew inscription around (“Year two of the freedom of Israel”). Mildenberg 19 (11 examples cited); Hendin 705; Mesh. AJC II, p. 270, 39. Very rare. NGC graded Extremely Fine. This coin is essentially as struck, and so we consider the piece a Superb Extremely Fine at the least. (more…)

Specialists in world coins and treasure items Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC has released their sixth and largest Treasure Auction, available immediately for viewing on their website, www.sedwickcoins.com. This auction features well over $1 million in coins, ingots, artifacts and books, almost all of it opening at very reasonable levels. Because of the size of the auction this time, Sedwick has split this sale into three sessions, all closing LIVE on www.iCollector.com/sedwick.

“After our first live Internet auction last time, we decided to hold our Treasure Auction #6 in three sessions to provide breaks and avoid bidders having to monitor the auction all day long to bid live on the lots they want,” says Sedwick. “Also there is no more confusion about the buyer’s fee, which is set at 18% for everyone (discounted to 15% for check or cash).”

Starting off Session I (Thursday, October 15, 11:00 am EDT) is a unique Mexican cob 8 escudos (possible) Royal 1709 (estimated at $35,000-$50,000), one of more than 70 gold cobs in this sale, mostly from the 1715 Fleet, including also an extremely rare Lima cob 8 escudos 1702 (estimated at $20,000-$30,000). World gold coins feature a Mexican bust 8 escudos 1733 PCGS AU-58 ($15,000-up) and a Paraguayan cut 4 pesos fuertes (1866-9) ($12,500-up), one of only two known. In the shipwreck silver section you will find a Cartagena cob 8 reales 1621 ($16,000-$25,000), first date of issue and one of three known, plus the Louis Hudson collection of Potosí countermarks 1649-52, as well as selections from the Atocha (1622) Research Collection and a newly formed “Coconut wreck” (ca. 1810) Research Collection.

The four silver-cob sections in Session II (Thursday, October 15, 4:30 pm EDT) feature a La Plata cob 1 real (estimated at $700-$1,000), the first ever offered at auction; a unique Potosí cob 2 reales specially struck on a zoomorphic planchet in the form of a double-headed condor ($25,000-up); the finest-known Panama cob 4 reales (estimated at $5,000-$7,500); and Part I of the extensive collection of late world-coins dealer Mark Bir. The world silver coins section, which is becoming larger and more advanced in Latin American coins with every auction, features several key rarities as well as Part I of the Colombian Republic collection of Herman Blanton.
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Discovered by chance, these coins are an important find, being of great historic significance. NGC was pleased to evaluate and provide protection for these great treasures.

NGC recently graded a number of gold Unites of the British monarch James I (1603–1625) from the Chipping Norton Hoard, discovered in the 1980s in an undisclosed location near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England.

The cache contained 59 gold Unites, 54 of which were struck in England and the remaining five from Scotland. It was discovered by chance in an old cellar as workmen excavated a foundation for a new building. Unaware of the significance or value of the find, the coins were given to a builder’s 10-year-old grandson, who kept them in a shoebox for years.

In 2005 the grandson took the coins to an appraisal event where the coins were examined by auctioneers Morton and Eden and the hoard was reported to the British Museum. Since the coins were found before the Treasure Act of 1996, two of the 59 coins were kept by the British Museum and the remaining 57 coins were returned to the owner, who subsequently sold them at a Morton and Eden auction held in London on June 9, 2009.

The hoard is significant because of the large sum of money it comprised at the time the coins were struck. Each of the 59 gold coins had the value of 20 shillings until 1612, and later that value was adjusted to 22 shillings. Records of salaries from the period are scant, but a church clerk might earn the equivalent of two gold Unites during an entire year. In other words, the hoard represented nearly 30 years of earnings. Even the gold bullion value of the hoard — which weighed about 15.5 ounces — is approximately $15,000 in today’s market.
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