"1652" 6P Oak Tree Imitation, Noe-19 MS(PCGS#535238)

August 2023 Global Showcase Auction U.S. Coins

拍卖行

Stack's Bowers

批号

8156

等级

VF30

价格

29,709

详细说明

Historic "Serpent Roots" Oak Tree Sixpence Forgery One of Five Known; Only Three in Private Hands The Famous John Ford - Mrs. Norweb - John Ford Specimen 1652 Oak Tree Sixpence Copy. Noe-19, Salmon 5-X, W-390. Rarity-7+. VF-30 (PCGS). 46.1 grains. This is the famous John Ford - Mrs. Norweb - John Ford example of this rare fabrication, cataloged in our (Stack's) May 2006 Ford XIV sale as: Good, medium gray centers, deeper gray around the peripheries. Softly struck in the centers. The variety takes its name from the sinuous appearance of the tree's roots. Extremely rare: the cataloguer knows of only four examples of this copy: this, ANS, private collection, Norweb:1176. Crosby had his doubts about the authenticity of the variety but listed it nevertheless. Noe included it in his catalogue on the strength of the listing in Crosby but did not have a specimen to illustrate. This particular example was the one New Netherlands Coin Company sold to Mrs. Emery May Norweb in October, 1953 for $550. When she saw the ANS specimen and learned that it was considered a forgery, and later heard from Eric Newman that he thought Noe 19 was a forgery, too, she returned the coin to New Netherlands. A few weeks later she bought a different example from Fred Baldwin in London. The coin that Mrs. Norweb bought from Fred Baldwin later appeared in our March 2015 sale of the Henry P. Kendall Foundation Collection and, more recently, Heritage's August 2022 sale of the Christopher J. Salmon Collection. The "private collection" coin referred to by Michael Hodder in his cataloging for Ford XIV is the E Pluribus Unum specimen, which realized $6,600 in our November 2020 sale of that collection. A fifth, ex Joe Lasser and unknown to the Ford cataloger, is at Colonial Williamsburg. Of the three examples in private hands, the Brand-Ford-Martin specimen offered here doesn't quite rise to the level of the AU-50 PCGS/NGC Norweb-Kendall-Salmon coin, but it is nicer than the E Pluribus Unum example, which appears to have been worked to look like a coin that was actually struck in the 17th century; it was certified EF Details--Damage by PCGS when offered in our November 2020 Auction. Provenance: From the Sydney F. Martin Collection. Earlier ex Virgil Brand Collection; John J. Ford, Jr.; our (Stack's) sale of the John J. Ford, Jr. Collection, Part XIV, May 2006, lot 510; Lawrence R. Stack Collection, November 2006. To view supplemental information and all items from the Sydney F. Martin Collection, click here. PCGS# 535238. NGC ID: 2ARJ.