A. H. Baldwin & Sons Ltd announce an auction of a 1839 Calcutta Mint Pattern Silver Rupee in The David Fore Collection. The collection comprising coins of British India, The Presidencies and Indian Native States will be sold in London in three parts, commencing 7th May 2013.
This Pattern was produced by a native die cutter due to the slowness of the dies coming from London and the need for coinage. The fact that it was rejected has made it the most sought after coin of the whole British Indian series. This coin was last sold in Baldwin’s Auction 22 - The Sir John Wheeler Collection - £28,000 pounds (the highest price for any coin in his wonderful sale) and before that in the Brand and Nobleman auctions. It is not really a truly "beautiful" coin but, by every definition, it can be considered “cool” and we expect it once again to be proven the most valuable coin in this auction. 1839 Calcutta Mint Pattern Silver Rupee, Unique in private hands with two others in the Calcutta mint.
Part one of the David Fore Collection auction on 7th May will consist of rare Proofs, Restrikes and Off-Metal Strikings and will include Proofs and Off-Metal Strikes of the Victorian Portraits from the States of Bikanir, Dewas, Dhar and Sailana. It will also include all the dates of the Gold Mohur series including an early Restrike Gold Proof 2-Mohurs, 1835C (pictured here), one of the most valuable pieces in the first part of the collection.
Part two will contain Patterns and Proofs of British India, The Presidencies and the Indian Native States and will be sold on the 31st May. Amongst the exceptional offerings will be a unique Bengal Gilt Pattern Pice of 1795, Pridmore No. 382 and the stellar piece of the entire collection, an 1839 Calcutta Mint Pattern Silver Rupee from the Wheeler Collection. Pictured here, the Rupee is one of only three known, the other two being held by the Calcutta mint. The Pattern was produced by a native die cutter due to a delay with the dies coming from London and the need for coinage. The fact that the Pattern was rejected makes it the most sought after coin in the whole British Indian series. It is anticipated that it will prove to be the most valuable coin in the collection.
Part three of the collection will be sold on the 26th September as part of a 2-day auction in conjunction with the UK’s largest numismatic exhibition, Coinex, of which Baldwin’s are the official auction sponsor. The third part of this collection will comprise circulating coins of British India, the Presidencies and the Indian Native States, including two 1911 George V coins, a ¼ and a ½ Rupee (pictured here). Both coins sold here are in mint state and are one of the key type coins in the British India series. The ½ Rupee is the most difficult type coin of the whole series to find in mint state and so this auction offers a unique opportunity for the collector.
The collection of over four thousand coins was formed over twenty five years by Dr. David Fore and Baldwin’s Canadian representative, Randy Weir. A plan to build a monumental collection took them on an amazing odyssey as the pair created a collection to rival the world famous collection of Fred Pridmore. David began collecting coins as a child when he watched his father, who owned a small store in a rural town of two thousand people, search his change looking for the elusive US 1909 SVDB Penny. At age nine, David’s first job was delivering newspapers. Instead of buying comic books, he would take his weekly earnings of a few dollars to the bank and get rolls of pennies to search through, also looking for that 1909 Penny. His very first foreign coin purchase was an Indian Proof Restrike ¼-Anna. This coin was the beginning of a love affair with Indian coins that was to last for forty years. Randy was privileged to introduce David to the fascinating world of colonial coins some fifteen years later and David found the minor differences and array of patterns in the series so fascinating that Randy describes each purchase as being like prospecting for gold.
A symbiotic relationship between client and trusted specialist and a mutual fascination for Indian coinage inspired these two to create the collection that is being sold today. The focus for the collection was always to find the best quality coins and over four hundred of the coins contained in the collection originated from the Pridmore collection which was catalogued by A.H. Baldwin & Sons Ltd and sold by auction by Glendinings between September 1981 and October 1983, the Indian part being sold in October 1982 and October 1983, around the time the pair met. Other coins have similarly fine provenance, having been part of such celebrated collections as the Sir John Wheeler Collection, the Ken Wiggins Collection and The Diana
Collection, all sold by Baldwin’s.
Source: www.Baldwin.co.uk
