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首席收藏网 > 数据中心 > Stack's Bowers and Ponterio > SBP-苏富比2017年3月波格集藏V

Lot:5091 1793 Liberty Cap Cent. Sheldon-13. Liberty Cap. Rarity-4-. About Uncirculated-55 (PCGS).

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外国钱币

USD 200000 - 250000

SBP-苏富比2017年3月波格集藏V

2017-04-01 07:30:00

2017-04-01 12:30:00

USD 376000

SBP

成交

He was a modeller in clay and practiced die-sinking, which last gained him the appointment, shortly before his death, of die-sinker to the Mint. The yellow fever of 1793 deprived his country of his abilities. - William Dunlap, on Joseph Wright, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, 1834Lovely tan color covers most of the reverse, along with the upper obverse and the right obverse periphery, while steely chocolate brown surfaces embrace the portrait of Liberty and the lower obverse. Nearly smooth with good gloss on both sides, this cent retains some suggestions of lustrous frost among the reverse intricacies. Scattered light marks are seen on the obverse, many of which pre-date striking. A dull mark on Libertys cheekbone is both nearly invisible and the most individually severe of these; a short scratch is seen at the right side of 3 in the date. Several rim nicks and bruises are present, including one above the left side of T in LIBERTY, one left of O in OF on the reverse, another above the space between ER in AMERICA, and others that are less evident. The eye appeal is superb, enriched by the fine color and nice surfaces, despite the presence of minor wear.The die state is a bit later than that seen on the previous lot, here showing a more developed bulge at the bases of NT of CENT. The lapping lines directly above the pole in the space between the cap and Libertys hair are not present, though light fatigue lines outline Libertys portrait around her forehead and below the bust truncation. A thin die crack or fissure in the die face extends into the field below the upright of L of LIBERTY. Some raised lumps in the same vicinity, particularly below the space between IB of LIBERTY, are the result of spalling, a process by which tiny chips fall off the face of the die.Among the most problem-free of the high grade 1793 Liberty Cap cents, this coin ideally showcases the Liberty Cap design of Joseph Wright. As a young portrait painter studying in London, just 26 years old, Wright was dispatched to Paris to paint Benjamin Franklin. He spent much of the first half of 1782 in Passy, the Paris suburb that served as Franklins home in France. In March 1782, Franklin conceived a medal that would have an enormous impact on the future of American coinage and the numismatic legacy of Joseph Wright. On March 4 of that year Franklin wrote to Robert R. Livingston, who had served with Franklin on the committee to compose the Declaration of Independence: "This puts me in a mind of a medal I have had a mind to strike, since the late great event you gave me an account of, representing the United States." A year later, Franklins brainchild would be realized, and the Libertas Americana medal engraved by Augustin Dupre would become a sensation in Europe and America. Joseph Wright left Paris while the medal was still in its design stages, but its impact on his later works is clear. His Liberty Cap cent of 1793, the first of which were struck just a day before the 1793 half cents that displayed a similar design, copied the obverse of the Libertas Americana medal almost exactly. Franklins official explication or description of the medal, published in Paris in May 1783, describes the obverse portrait: "the head representing American Liberty has its tresses floating in the air, to show that she is in activity. The cap carried on a spear is her ensign." The cap, of course, is the Liberty cap, a stylized version of the pileus of classical times, a powerful symbol of freedom that was commonplace in England and America even before the American Revolution.Many, perhaps most, of the leaders of the American Revolution were given examples of the Libertas Americana medal. Jeffersons was displayed in a frame at Monticello and described in his inventory of art as "a medal by Doctor Franklin." Washingtons, struck in silver, was housed in a sumptuous box that contained a set of medals struck in France to commemorate the Revolution. If Wright didnt own one personally, the odds are good that others in his circle did, likely including Mint Director David Rittenhouse.Joseph Wrights relationship to the United States Mint began even before coining did. He is known to have produced two works before his final project, the 1793 Liberty Cap cent. Their sequence is not known. Wrights 1792 "Eagle on Globe" pattern was almost certainly produced as an essay for the quarter dollar denomination, an extreme rarity today though examples are known in both copper and white metal. His medal for Henry Lee was the last entry into the Comitia American medal series, composed of medals authorized by Congress to be presented to military leaders of the Revolution. While all others were engraved and struck in Paris in the 1780s, the Lee medal was somehow neglected. The obverse for Wrights portrait medal of Lee cracked in hardening, and strikes from his original dies are so rare today as to be entirely uncollectible. Both of these efforts preceded his 1793 Liberty Cap cent, of which four obverses and two reverses were produced.Research by Bill Eckberg, published in Penny-Wise in September 2010, has shown that the 1793 Liberty Cap cents were struck on July 18 and July 22, indicating that the dies must have been executed some time earlier. The fruits of the Mints labor for those two days amounted to 11,056 cents, representing the sum total of the 1793 Liberty Cap cent production, all delivered to the Mints treasurer on September 18. By the day they were inspected, counted, and turned over for distribution, Joseph Wright was dead, a victim of the plague that turned Philadelphia vacant during the late summer doldrums for years into the early 19th century: yellow fever.Among Wrights last acts was to lodge a request with the United States government that his estate be paid for his two projects before his official employment as a Mint engraver. Mordecai Wetherill (mistranscribed in Taxay as "Moid Wetherill") was the son of Samuel Wetherill, a druggist who served as chairman of the Yellow Fever Committee of the Common Council of the city of Philadelphia in 1793. On September 11, 1793, when Wright was just a day or two from death, Wetherill was dispatched with a memo from Wright:Joseph Wright being very ill and not expecting to recover, requested the subscriber to make a memorandum as follows: that the said Joseph Wright had presented an account against the United States for cutting a medal, amount fifty guineas. Two essays of a quarter dollar, cut by direction of David Rittenhouse, Esqr. and presented to him (broke in hardening) value about 40 guineas.On December 31, 1793, Thomas Jefferson closed the book on Joseph Wrights career with the Mint officially, issuing an order that asked for "Wrights representatives to be paid for engraving the medal of Govr Lee and (that being broke in hardening) another to be engraved." Yet, his artistic concept of Liberty lived on. The Liberty Cap design persisted on cents through 1796 (and most other denominations, sans cap), when the French association with the Libertas Americana apparently became too politically poisonous for the design to continue.This example has long been considered to be one of the coins that emerged from the Brand Collection in the early 1940s, perhaps the one invoiced by Burdette G. Johnson to dealer James P. Randall on April 18, 1944 as "1793 Liberty Cap, Crosby 12-L. Unc., light nick on edge" for $360. Three years later, B. Max Mehls sale of the Frederic W. Geiss Collection included two high grade examples of the 1793 Liberty Cap; only lot 10, the first of the two lots, was illustrated, and the photograph was of the Atwater example that was safely ensconced in the Eliasberg cabinet at the time. (This was the era in which several firms used "stock" illustrations in their catalogs-often not of the actual coin being sold.) Lot 10 was described as "purchased by Mr. Geiss as Uncirculated" but showing "the very slightest cabinet friction" with "medium light even light brown surface, slightly glossy." It realized $400, in line with the Brand-Johnson-Randall coin sold in 1944. The following lot was noted as being "from the famous Dr. Hall Collection of Boston, also of the Virgil Brand Collection of Chicago," further described as "almost as choice ... another specimen which Mr. Geiss purchased as Uncirculated." It was lauded for being "boldly struck even on the center of reverse," which Mehl rightly pointed out is "usually weak on this variety." The color was described as "attractive and nicely blended medium olive." It sold for $250. Considering this examples light color, and slight typical softness at the central reverse, it is more likely to be lot 10 from the Geiss sale than lot 11; neither is provable in the absence of further evidence. On either side of the Virgil Brand divide, severed connections are difficult to knit back together with certainty without photographic evidence. This coins provenance since the late 20th century includes several memorable auctions and well known collectors. Even in an historical vacuum, this cent stands out as one of the most attractive of its kind.

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