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 Sixpence, large portholes, PCGS F-12.
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Description:
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Avant Garde Collection. As new collectors enter the hobby, the Redbook frequently serves as their introduction to American coinage, and the Hogge money has the distinction as being named therein as "the first struck for the English colonies in the New World". Interestingly, some readers (especially those much younger than the cataloger) may not have actually learned the history behind the "Somer Islands", which we know today as Bermuda. Juan de Bermudez was the first to land near the islands 1505, claiming them for Spain, and again in 1532 when he was shipwrecked there. Technically, he never set foot on the actual landmass, fearing to venture past the dangerous reef that surrounds the islands, but subsequent visitors evidently reached the land itself, or came close enough that live pigs in their cargo were able to make shore and flourish in the subtropical climate. (Indeed, so dangerous to 16th century explorers was the reef in combination with violent storms, that the islands were referred to as the Isle of Devils.) To subsequent visitors who were able to use the hogs as food, the islands became known as the Hogge Islands, and money coined for use there became referred to as "Hogge money". As European exploration took place during the early 17th century, the Virginia Company established an English settlement, and later turned over rights to the Somers Isles Company until 1684. The islands became a possession of the Crown and an official British colony in 1707, remaining today as a British Overseas Territory, and the oldest continuously-inhabited territory that still belongs to Great Britain. The Bermuda Islands today consists of 181 individual islands and a total area under 21 square miles. As bidders know from our discussion of the Somers Islands shilling in this same catalog, the saline climate of the islands serves as a very harsh environment for coins. (Indeed, it is interesting to note that no fresh water is actually available on Bermuda, except for that collected by rainfall.) This sixpence shows obvious evidence of the environmental effects, including a heavily corroded and pitted surface that impairs one's ability to view details. Nonetheless, the sharpness overall, particularly in the rigging of the ship, seems unusually strong for a coin at the "fine" grade level (thankfully, PCGS declined to execute some impossibly precise off-grade numeric opinion). While cleaned in such a way as to bring out highpoint details to some extent, the caramel color on the highest relief areas only aids sharpness slightly. A piece of the coin is missing from the 7:00 position as viewed from the hog motif, but nobody will care when the excessive rarity is taken into consideration. PCGS also lists provenance to "Loye Lauder", whose collection of patterns and colonial coins was sold by Doyle Galleries in 1983; Loye Lauder was an heir to the Lauder cosmetics fortune. (PCGS# 000005)
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Low Estimate:
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$50,000.00 |
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High Estimate:
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$75,000.00 |
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Lot Status:
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Bidding has been closed for this lot. |
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Hammered Price: |
$40,250.00
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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. |