The Collectors' Auction 2013
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Please Note: A 15% Buyers' Premium is added to the hammer price of all lots in this sale.
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(About The Images)
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Lot Title:
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(1616) Sommer Islands Shilling, small sail, PCGS XF-40.
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Description:
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Avant Garde Collection. The Somers Islands coinage becomes familiar to collectors mostly by virtue of inclusion in the Redbook, which honors the coins as "the first struck for the English colonies in the New World". Representatives are also referred to by collectors as "hog money", an appellation that echoes the original spelling of "Hogge money", in turn named for the "Hogge Islands", where domesticated pigs from (probably) a 16th century shipwreck invaded the island, interbred and proliferated. Much has been discussed in scholarly circles about hog money, including its very crude manufacture done purposely at an English mint to ensure they would not be exported from their intended circulation on the island. Although originally given a light silver wash, the salty conditions of the islands ensured rapid demise of the coins, and all show environmental damage today. A fascinating discussion at the University of Notre Dame discusses how the coins may have been made, suggesting they were stamped in multiples on a strip of metal by a roller press, then subsequently hand-cut to proper size and shape. This coin is very dark as will always be the case for Hogge money. Early in the 1900s, collectors believed that perhaps a handful of pieces remained in existence, but in the intervening decades, more have been discovered in the sands of Bermuda through the use of metal detectors. However, as one might expect, centuries of exposure to harsh saline conditions only multiplied the already-crude appearance of any so-located pieces. The present example displays very dark, yet surprisingly inoffensive burnt-sienna patina that, with some use of imagination, can almost be thought to still yield a ghostly silver overcast. PCGS wisely offers an "XF-40" grade rather than some other impossibly precise opinion, and from a condition-census standpoint, that is probably as reasonable an opinion as any. Mentally compensating for the extremely low-contrast appearance, the coin does exhibit surprising sharpness that includes actual texture in the hog's hide and some facial expression, while the ships rigging features surprisingly well delineated lines. (PCGS# 000006)
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Low Estimate:
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$100,000.00 |
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High Estimate:
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$150,000.00 |
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Lot Status:
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Bidding has been closed for this lot. |
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Hammered Price: |
$125,250.00
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Price Realized:
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- |
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Price history for items of the same classification:
No history for this lot classification has been found. |