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Message:: [QUOTE="Orielensis, post: 7413107, member: 96898"]Donna, that's a fantastic coin! I don't have any gold to show, but I own a coin sold by Kreß under the company name "Otto Helbing Nachf." in 1942. Just as you and Curtis, I felt very uneasy about this provenance (more on this below):[ATTACH=full]1288429[/ATTACH] Gordian III, Roman Empire, antoninianus, 238–239 AD, Rome mint. Obv: IMP CAES M ANT GORDIANVS AVG; bust of Gordian III, radiate and draped, r. Rev: VIRTVS AVG; Virtus standing l., leaning on shield and holding spear. 22mm, 5.00g. Ref: RIC IV Gordian III 6. Ex Otto Helbing Nachf., München, Auction 86 (11/15/1942), lot 1757; ex AMCC 2, lot 464. Auction ticket and catalogue entry:[ATTACH=full]1288430[/ATTACH] Like the coins Curtis has shown above, this antoninianus was sold by[USER=84744]@Severus Alexander[/USER] in AMCC 2 and consigned by [USER=72712]@arnoldoe[/USER] . As a matter of fact, Curtis and me competed for most of the ex Helbing coins in this auction, and I'm happy to have at least won one of them. Just as Curtis, I did some research on this provenance, and I found a 2004 monograph by Wolfram Selig on the destruction of Jewish businesses in Munich under the Nazi regime, which has a section on Heinrich Hirsch and Karl Kreß. I have a scan of the relevant pages (in German) and can send them to you if you are interested. Here is the brief version of what I found out: As Curtis mentioned, the Nazi authorities in 1935 denied Heinrich Hirsch and his nephew Gerhard Hirsch an auction permit, and in 1936 prohibited them from selling to private customers. This effectively put the Hirschs out of business. Heinrich Hirsch managed to bring at least some of their inventory and numismatic library to Switzerland, but he had to sell the firm in Munich. Karl Kreß was the owner of a local printing company ("Kreß & Hornung, Buchdruckerei & Verlag") and had produced auction catalogues for Otto Helbing Nachf. The Hirschs and Kreß thus knew each other and had been in business before. In August 1938, Heinrich Hirsch and Kreß signed a sales contract. Kreß paid 10.750 RM for coins to Hirsch's niece, 16.650 RM for inventory and the company name Otto Helbing Nachf., and an additional 7.000 RM for a numismatic catalogue library. According to the charts provided by the Bundesbank, the total sale price equals a purchasing power of about $180.000 in 2021. This is very low. It appears clear that Kreß took advantage of Hirsch's situation. Heinrich Hirsch was "denaturalized" in 1939 and all of his property remaining in Germany was seized. He probably expected this and thus tried to sell his company as quickly as possible. In the following years, Kreß ran into some legal trouble with the Nazi authorities himself. First, he tried to intervene in favor of Heinrich Hirsch in a lawsuit. The latter had been accused of moving his wealth to Switzerland, which the Nazi authorities considered illegal. Kreß probably got engaged in this lawsuit since the catalogue library he bought remained in Switzerland and could only be legally brought to Munich if the case against Hirsch was dropped or ended in acquittal. Secondly, Kreß initially refused to change the "Jewish" company name "Otto Helbing Nachf." because of brand recognition concerns. This was against the "Aryanization" policy of the Nazi regime and led to another lawsuit. I could not find any indication that Karl Kreß was a party member or in any other way ideologically engaged in the Nazi regime, but he certainly seized an opportunity to financially profit from the persecution of his Jewish fellow citizens. Heinrich Hirsch was murdered in Theresienstadt in 1943. Gerhard Hirsch survived the holocaust, returned to Munich, and in 1953 founded the still existing auction house "Gerhard Hirsch Nachfolger."[/QUOTE]

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