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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:5106 1797 Draped Bust Cent. Sheldon-135. Reverse of 1797, With Stems. Rarity-3+. Mint State-66 RB (PCGS).

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USD 60000 - 70000

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 70500

SBP

成交

David Nichols, living near Gallows Hill, would occasionally open the bag of mint-bright cents of 1796 and 1797 and give us one of each. - John Robinson, The Numismatist, August 1917Unlike many of the gem quality large cents offered on these pages, encountering a Mint State example of the Sheldon-135 variety is not unusual. Thanks to a small hoard known as the Nichols Find, perhaps a few dozen Uncirculated examples exist. Few, if any, compare to this coin, which has long been listed atop the census of known survivors from these dies. Rich mint color survives on both sides, barely mellowed to attractive medium brown on Libertys portrait and showing just hints of brown color in the obverse fields. The reverse remains nearly full red, mellowed only on the design elements. The luster spins unabated around both sides. The surfaces are fiercely frosty and beautiful to behold. Unlike most survivors of the Nichols Find, composed of this variety, 1796 Sheldon-119, and 1797 Sheldon-123, no dark spotting is seen, just a minimal dark area at the denticles just above Libertys bust and a couple even smaller points on the reverse. The strike is excellent, firm enough to obliterate the nicks inherent in the planchet that are often encountered in the fields of this variety. Some of this planchet texture is seen in the low spot at the central obverse, where the area near Libertys ear is soft, aligning with the somewhat rounded details of the bow on the reverse. Very shallow natural granularity below OF and above N of ONE and T of CENT is neither notable nor unusual, caused by some unknown substance that clung to the reverse die. A short lintmark is seen to the lower right of F of OF, and another is curled and well hidden on Libertys shoulder.The die state is early, equivalent to Breens Die State II. The spine or line running through the leaf cluster below RI of AMERICA is likely a lapping line, left when the very light clash marks that remain visible atop the wreath were mostly effaced. Sharp but shallow clash marks are also seen around the date and in front of Libertys profile. A small spalling eruption is present above C of AMERICA.The coins of the Nichols Find trace their lineage to David Nichols of Salem, Massachusetts, who lent his name to a small group of Mint State cents dated 1796 and 1797 that were in his possession. Nichols lived near Gallows Hill, made famous by the unsavory aftermath of the Salem Witch Trials, and died in Salem in 1882 at the age of 72. In comments to the April 1917 meeting of the Boston Numismatic Society, published in The Numismatist in August of that year, John Robinson recalled his days as a young collector living nearby.David Nichols, living near Gallows Hill, would occasionally open the bag of mint-bright cents of 1796 and 1797 and give us one of each. The lot came, it was said, from the Hon. Benjamin Goodhue, who received them in part pay for his services in the U.S. Senate. As I remember them at the time there were about 50 or 60 of each date in the bag.W. Elliot Woodward, the Roxbury coin dealer and druggist whose writings made him a window into the numismatic world around Boston from the 1860s through 1890s, corroborated Robinsons story in his January 1882 sale. "When I first saw these cents, they were kept in a bag in which Benj. Goodhue, the grandfather of Mrs. Nichols, brought them from Philadelphia in 1797."Oral history is an excellent but imperfect source, often grasping the heart of a story without mastering all the particulars. Mrs. Nichols was in fact kin to Benjamin Goodhue, a wealthy Salem merchant who served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1789 to 1796, then served less than one term in the U.S. Senate before resigning in 1800. Goodhue was not her grandfather, however, but a great-uncle, brother to her grandmother Hannah Goodhue. Hannah died young, leaving her son Robert Proctor as Benjamin Goodhues oldest nephew. There is nothing in the historical record to contradict the twice-told tale that the cents that devolved to David Nichols came from his wifes ancestors, the Goodhues. Perhaps Proctor even had a bit of a bug for collecting; he lived down the street from Benjamin Watkins, whose coin collection was sold at auction in 1828, meriting the first printed numismatic auction catalog to be published in the United States. The Watkins broadside remains the Holy Grail of American numismatic literature.Where potential truth ends, myth fills in the blanks. John Robinsons decades-old recollection that Goodhue received the cents as his pay is an alarming concept on its face, as a single days pay for service in Congress ($6) received in cents would have added the weight of a healthy housecat (14 pounds) to his saddle bags for the long ride home. Walter Breen, in his 1952 study of coin hoards in The Numismatist, took the story a step further, suggesting that Goodhue had obtained the cents directly from the Mint in December 1797. In later writings, he theorized that Goodhue had originally received a bag of 1,000 coins. Instead, Benjamin Goodhue was among the towns wealthiest merchants for most of the late 18th century, including when these coins were struck. His business was exactly the sort who could have ordered a group of freshly minted cents from a Boston bank for commercial use. It is far more likely that a small parcel of these cents was passed down through the family than any story concocted around Goodhue receiving the coins directly from the Mint.W. Elliot Woodward clearly recognized a fresh deal when he got wind of it. Woodward handled many of the most famous hoards to appear around Boston from the 1860s to the 1880s, and it appears he got to handle this hoard as well. The first reference to the Nichols Hoard in print appears in his September 1879 sale of the Pratt Collection, where lot 487 was described as "1796 Fillet head, perfectly Uncirculated, fine color and nearly proof surface; from the Nichols hoard; extremely rare." The following lot was written up as "1797 Companion piece to the last, but if possible in even finer condition; from the same source and of equal rarity." Less than a month later, Woodward sold the cabinet of John Robinson, the man who recalled being given cents by Mr. Nichols when he was just a boy. Robinsons 1796 was noted as being "selected from the Nichols Hoard, one of the best of the lot, perfectly uncirculated, and with almost proof surface; a finer cent of this variety has never been sold." Two lots later, a 1797 was similarly described: "1797 Companion piece to the first described 1796, but in quality even surpassed that, having a strictly proof surface." He sold others regularly in the early 1880s, suggesting that Woodward had acquired the group from the then-elderly Mr. Nichols, who died in May 1882.While John Kleebergs Numismatic Finds of the Americas asserts the Nichols coins hit the market as early as the early 1860s, he seems to have conflated this group with another group of cents found in Salem in the possession of an A.F. Walcott that included many other dates, ranging from 1795 to 1803. The Nichols coins included exclusively cents of 1796 and 1797, with no other dates ever rumored.Decades after it was pulled from Mr. Nichols bag, this coin earned a laurel few large cents can wear. It was personally cataloged by Dr. William H. Sheldon himself for the 1947 ANA sale, where it was described as "Mint State with almost full mint red. A gem cent." Dr. Sheldon graded it 65 and estimated its value, based upon a basal value of $1.50 for the variety, at $100, previewing the "science of cent values" that would debut in his work Early American Cents, published in 1949.Perhaps the ultimate type coin among surviving 18th century Draped Bust cents, struck from dies whose long denticles serve to frame this beloved design, the Pogue Sheldon-135 is one of just four 1797 cents to be graded MS-66 RB by PCGS. Three of the four are offered in the present catalog, but only this one comes with the romance of an 18th-century hoard whose revelation launched a legend.

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