Gold 8 escudos could bring $100,000
Boston goldsmith Joseph Edwards Jr. doesn’t have the fame Ephraim Brasher and his Brasher doubloon do, but the two men were in the same business. Both were goldsmiths who stamped…
Boston goldsmith Joseph Edwards Jr. doesn’t have the fame Ephraim Brasher and his Brasher doubloon do, but the two men were in the same business.
Both were goldsmiths who stamped foreign gold coins of adjusted weight to indicate a standard of value for early Americans.
Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC, will auction a 1741 gold cob 8 escudo of Peru stamped by Edwards to indicate a $15 value.
The coin has a pre-sale estimated price of $100,000.
The piece is graded XF-40 by Numismatic Guaranty Corporation.
It is pedigreed to the Julius L. Brown collection that was sold in the S.H. Chapman auction of 1911 as lot 343.
“This is a very important piece for both the Spanish colonial coin collector as well as the U.S. collector,” said company president Daniel Sedwick.
“Never before have we offered such a significant gold coin; the dual-nation history it represents goes far beyond a simple countermark.”
This is the only gold coin known to have been so stamped by Edwards, who was a third-generation goldsmith in Boston.
He lived 1737 to 1783.
The coin is expected to be at the top of the prices realized list when Sedwick’s live Internet auction is conducted May 15-16.
The 2,000-lot sale is jam-packed with the coinage of the Spanish American empire in Latin America.
Many of the coins trace to famous sunken treasure that has been recovered.
Ingots recovered from seven different shipwrecks will be offered to bidders.
There are three large silver bars recovered from the Atocha, which sank in 1622 in the Gulf of Mexico.
The finest one, as described by the firm, is a Class Factor 1.0-graded bar (the highest grade attainable for bars from the wreck) weighing in at 88 troy pounds, 3.84 troy ounces and dated 1621. It has an estimate of $30,000 and up.
The other two large bars, with Class Factors 0.7 and 0.9, are estimated at $20,000 to $30,000 each.
Another Atocha ingot of note in this auction is a rare cylindrical “piña” weighing 4,312 grams and estimated at $15,000 and up.
Besides the many Latin American coins, there are a few Morgan and Peace silver dollars.
Bidders can register for the auction at www.auction.sedwickcoins.com.
This article was originally printed in Numismatic News Express. >> Subscribe today
More Collecting Resources
• The Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1601-1700 is your guide to images, prices and information on coins from so long ago.
• Any coin collector can tell you that a close look is necessary for accurate grading. Check out this USB microscope today!
