DAVISSON'S AUCTION 39 CLOSES APRIL 1, 2020

Our 39th major auction is a long way from our first such sale in April of 1993. We began by noting "We have been publishing fixed price catalogs…for well over two decades. We are excited about assembling and publishing our first major bid sale."

Well, we are still excited about our annual major sale. We start thinking about it a year in advance, seeking special items to feature. Our first auction catalog had well over 300 lots—gold coins (31 lots), Greek coins including a couple of rare staters from Crete, Roman Republican coins (23 lots), Roman through Ostrogothic, 122 English, Scottish and Irish coins, tokens, medals and a run of books. The photos were black-and-white at the end of the text.

This catalog is a strong successor to that early beginning. The photos are in color in the text. The mix is similar. The terms are little different. In 1993 we noted that "There is NO ten percent buyer’s fee." The only change here is that hardly any auction firm now limits the buyer’s fee to ten percent.

Some thoughts on what we have found for this sale:

Gold coins in this sale range from ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Celtic to hammered English to an early 19th century US rarity–affordable pieces that would make handsome additions to a collection. We put back some hammered English gold coins for this sale, enabling us to offer better quality pieces at a time of strong prices for high quality hammered gold.

The ancient Greek and Roman sections are representative of the broad and exciting world of ancient coins. Look for some exceptional tetradrachms, and many rare and special coins throughout. We had an old collection of ancient coins to pick from and the rarity and quality are exceptional, the estimates modest.

In addition to high quality British hammered coins, some exceptional foreign crowns, and a small group of Colonial and early American coins, two areas deserve special mention:

• The Frank Robinson Collection: In this sale we begin his collection of crowns—an exceptional run of high quality pieces. A "good Extremely Fine" crown with attractive old toning is a very satisfying piece to have in a collection. The pieces that particularly amazed me are the coins in the specimen and proof sets. To find complete sets with choice coins throughout is highly unusual. These sets are as fine or finer than any I have seen and when I talked with Frank about them he commented about how careful he had been in acquiring them.

• The Mike Sussman Collection of British Tokens is a strong sampling of some of the best and scarcest tokens in his nearly 500 piece collection. He formed the collection over the past few years picking up material from such major sales as the Baldwin Basement Sale series. He sought the best possible quality and was willing in many cases to pay a premium. The estimates are conservative and many of the rarities are pieces you seldom see. (We offered his Pidcock tokens in an earlier sale and one of the pieces sold was an RRR piece that Waters reported as "not traced.") For all the years I have worked with tokens I was surprised myself to see a few pieces I had not seen before and that were even lacking in the massive 1998 Noble sale.

When I look back at our old catalogs I see things that I will not see again. Some coins are available almost anytime if you are willing to pay the price. Some things are here now but may well end up gone for generations. Some of what we offer fits in this latter category. Each of our sales has had items that I now realize were a fleeting opportunity.

Thank you for your ongoing interest and support. I hope you enjoy this sale.

To browse the catalog, see:
https://davcoin.com/sale/Printed%20Auction%2039

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