15th-century Fifty Excelentes, struck
under the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, perhaps the most important coin in the Hispanic Society of America’s trove, sold through Sotheby’s
This just in from Sotheby’s, in response to my query regarding its sealed-bid auction, which ended yesterday, of 37,895 Spanish coins owned since 1949 by the Hispanic Society of America:
We are very pleased to announce that the Archer M. Huntington Collection of nearly 38,000 coins from the Hispanic world has been sold to an anonymous purchaser, for a price that is confidential.
Sotheby’s offered the entire cache as one lot, estimated to bring some $25-35 million. The collection was assembled by HSA’s founder, Archer Milton Huntington and long deposited on loan from the HSA, as Huntington desired, at the American Numismatic Society. The financially pressed HSA says that it plans to apply the proceeds to future acquisitions.
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum