I was also tracking this coin as a possible purchase today. The coin is pedestrian but the engraving certainly changes the way we look at the coin. It's makes tangible the often intangible, one of the greatest if not the greatest allure of coin collecting......who has touched this in the past, what is its' story, talk to me. Apparently the coin below did more than talk............ I am not sure how one could prove when the inscription on the reverse was engraved or if it was indeed authentic. The attribution uses the phrase (apparently used by) and that is a bit too vague for my taste. However the estimate seemed like something low enough that would I follow it and possibly bid. In the end I did not bid. BTW the bidding was quiet till a few days ago when it made a surge to 7, then 10 then 11x estimate. It went higher today in the last moments. I can't remember this much of a discrepancy between estimate and hammer >37x estimate.... not including 15% buyer fee. That's collecting for you..........................
Love the history, especially since I come from good Southern stock and fly the stars and bars to honor my heritage.
Clio wins many of my targeted coins . Today though he apparently didn't want my primary target... yay!!
Wait...are we in the Ancients, U.S., or Coin Chat? That would be a cool coin to own but unless the hammer price was somewhere around two dollars...Ya...I would be out
FYI - the "apparently" refers to Major Shaw's use of the coin as a pocket piece. There is no doubt that it actually belonged to him.
They should have been clearer and the estimate should have been higher. I would have bid, although in this case I would have still lost. That is a big price.
I was the one who set the estimate. No one here even remotely expected that price. I thought something between $500 and $1000 for the hammer, some optimists thought up to $3k, if the right bidders showed up. They obviously did!
the low estimate and the word "apparently" led me to believe this was a gamble. If I knew the provenance was solid, and the estimate was $750, I would have bid $1,500 easily. If the estimate was $1,500 I would have shied away, on the assumption it would have gone for at least 2x estimate and that for me would be too high. I am not a civil war collector. However obviously others knew better and wanted it far more. The seller must be thrilled. Really extraordinary to see such a high multiple. Can you think of another that high?
It happens a lot with weird stuff like this that's tough to value. Then there's the sales right at the start of a market shift. A perfect example was the collection of Chinese dragon dollars CNG sold a couple of years back, or the Lissner sale last summer, which saw some Venezuelan bring 20x estimate or more. You also have the sales where a new, major player comes in and blows everything out of the water, like the first BCD Thessaly sale done by Nomos.
I see you added an addendum. Very interesting. If true, it would explain the multiple. I assume this added info came from the buyer. Addendum: As a point of interest, it was brought to our attention that the "by Mack" in the reverse inscription may represent General George B. McClellan, who was affectionately nicknamed "Little Mac" by his troops, while others sometimes called him the "Young Napoleon".
