Here's the coins in the auction: https://www.invaluable.com/catalog/uyc0bdosi9?size=50&page=1&categories=&searchWithAll=NGC
Now imagine trying to authenticate a NE threepence when there's only one other coin currently known. There's a thread over on CCF about a NE threepence found in an old coin cabinet in the Netherlands that's been going on since March 2020. There still isn't an answer on authenticity. I didn't know anything about these NE coins until I saw that thread. This shilling was on all the major news sites about a month ago. I was expecting it to sell much higher, given the finest-known grade. An AU50 sold on Heritage for $417k 11 years ago. Edit: oops, March 2020, not 2000.
Yeah, it's not like you can have a zoom meeting with the guy who struck something that old . Furthermore most mintage paper work from that period when those coins were produced has gone the way of the passenger pigeon, also. The article did say King Charles II considered that the mint producing the shilling was considered treasonous , so maybe some papers are still held by the royal family or in the British Museum that could be construed as provenance. Oh well.
Actually, there is an enormous amount of research done on these, since it was the first mint in what would become the US. For a mind-numbing example, go through "Studies on John Hull, the Mint and the Economics of Massachusetts Coinage" https://coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/MAMintDocs.studies.html. I agree that it doesn't help authenticate a specific coin though. And once these got collector interest, and images were published, they were counterfeited. Wyatt copies from the 1850s were based on this plate in an 1839 book - the horizontal lines in the plates were meant to designate blank space, but Wyatt put the lines on the coins!
Not all of us acquired an early familiarity with these types. Even fewer of us will ever see one in person. In 45 years of collecting, I never have. But they’re instantly recognizable to any numismatist of a certain age (like yours truly), who read the Red Book cover to cover as a lad, again and again (because that was all we had), and dreamed covetous daydreams about all those rare colonial types.
