What a sad day for a rarity - Lost my cool

Good evening fellow collectors,

As a few of you know I collect tokens from Iceland. Now some of these tokens are very rare with only a few specimens known to exist.

Early this week a man gave me a call and said he had one of those tokens. A 1880 100 Aurar made by Petur J Thorsteinsson a merchant from the town of Bildudalur. This is one of my favourit tokens and I have studdied the history of them and the merchant. They stand for everything I love about collecting.

This one is from my collection - Nice patina, and a over all honest piece. Mind you grade is not an issue when it comes to these as you would guess.



Now this particilour token is one of the rarer ones with less then 8 known to eixst. 6 Privatly owned and 3 in museums if I remember correctly and finding out there is a ninth just made my heart go boom.

We agreed on a price ( Grade is not an issue ) he sent a scan wich was a very low reselution scan and it seemed just fine.

But today he came and handed me the token and this is what I saw.



My heart sank when I saw it. It is cleaned to the core so to speak with cemicals and brushes. My first reaction was to ask him if he cleaned it even though I saw it was done recently.

But even with the token in this state it is still rare and I was trying to figure out what to do. I had a oblegation feeling but when I asked him were he got it from I had to hand it back.

Now the law in Iceland is very strickt when it comes to items that are considered a national tresure and all items found that are over 100 years old have to be handed over and in this case it
seems that he has to hand the token over. And that is the best place for it as it needs decates to get that patina back.

Now I get calls every day about coins as I buy and sell and every time I say the same thing " PLEASE DO NOT CLEAN THE COINS " but this time because it was a item close to my heart I forgot.

I´m not saying I could have prevented it but still it reminds me that you can not say it often enough " DO NOT CLEAN ANYTHING ".

Siggi

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I agree, they sure took something to that, yours looks wonderful, and with only a handful known to exist, it is almost heartbreaking.

 

How sad. I'm so sorry.

 

Please pardon my ignorance on the matter, but I'm curious.

What circumstances would make a 132 year old coin legal for private ownership? If it had somehow been recorded as belonging to him as late as 1980?

 

How did he acquire the token? TC

 

The coin was found in a house that was being restored.

 

A real shame.

 

There seems to be differences between the coins...

1. The serif on the one (1)
2. The spacing between the zeroes (0)

...to name a couple. Die variations? Hand punched? Counterfeit? :scratch:

 

These were hand punched

 

Thanks! :thumb:

 

A shame indeed. Keep your head up.

A little off topic, but have you ever heard the Icelandic band Sigur Ros? They create some of the most beautiful and inspiring music I have ever heard.

 

Pretty sad, to see something that rare in that shape. So I'm guessing due to the law there are no old Icelandic coins in anyone's personal collection? Was also wondering if thats the same their paper money.

 

As you can tell, I'm not only new to this forum, but also new to coin collecting and am trying to understand the laws and customs of your country as you relate them, so please forgive this question.

You say that certain coins that are of historical nature have to be turned in as the laws are quite strict.

So if you were doing remodeling to you own home and you found a similiar token to the one that you were offered for purchase, is there a point where you could keep the coin without running afoul of your local laws. For example you find the token behind some wall board can you keep the item and if you cannot to whom do you have to turn the coin into. Are the local coin preserver or museum required to purchase the coin from you at a fair market value or do they just sumarily take and keep the coin with no money coming your way.

I believe that England has such a law but if memory serves me sufficiently and I'm not going dotty, the authorities have to fix a fair market price for the coin and if the museum cannot pay that price then the coin reverts to the finder.

I think that such provisions would keep a coin out of the black market and the finder is truly reqarded for his honesty.

Just ideal curiousity honestly.

 

Bad guess. The point seems to be what Siggi mentioned in a later post (#6). Not that I am familiar with Icelandic law, but here is some more info about the background: "The Icelandic Law on antiquities has a very wide and all-encompassing definition of what consitutes an archaeological site. According to this legislation all man-made structures and traces of human activity older than 100 years are archaeological sites and have statutory protection as such." (Source)

Christian

 

This has been edited because I did not read the original post correctly .

 

So is that now ten pieces known? It is possible that he made a cast copy and tried to artificially age it. That may account for the harsh cleaning.

 

I think he said the first piece is from his collection and the second is the one he was looking at.

 

Lol now I see that , I read that he sent a scan & went on auto pilot comparing the pics . Wow , swing and a miss for me on comprehension today .

 

Toss that thing in your pocket for 6 months or so and it would probably look a lot better!

 

Tough break Ziggy. Better luck next time.