Our 1997 auction season continued in May with a sale of nearly 1,200 lots of United States coins and paper money featuring the McGreevy Family and Bruce Lawrence collections. While not complete offerings, the quality was nicer than what was usually offered and there was great competition for both common and scarce items by bidders looking to fill holes in their collections. Interest and participation by both collectors and dealers continued to grow as the year went on.
June brought our sale of the Schoonmaker Family Collection of Ancient and Modern Coins, over 900 lots that blended historical and popular coinage of gold, silver, and copper. This was a collection that addressed both monetary history and the art found on this array of world currency. Our specialist staff enjoyed cataloging and making historical notes of many of the coins in our auction catalog. Following this offering was another catalog of more than 800 lots that offered the Schoonmaker American coins as well as the Elm Rock Collection of U.S. Colonial Coins.
Stack’s opened its fall auction season with our September sale of choice and scarce coins highlighted by the well known Hubert Remick Collection. This catalog included U.S. gold silver and copper coins plus a specialized collection of early American and Canadian copper and U.S. paper money. Highlights included sets of minor coins from small cents to nickel five-cent pieces, as well as twenty-cent pieces, quarters, and commemorative half dollars. Important Proof sets included 1871, 1882, 1884, 1895, and 1900, plus many other Proofs. There was a basic type set of U.S. gold starting in 1795 along with many other popular and outstanding coins that were enthusiastically bid on by both floor and mail bidders.
The October Sale of 1,461 lots featured the outstanding Albert W. Savage Collection of U.S. coins, along with other important consignments. The Savage Collection started as a basic type set and expanded to become a very valuable collection spanning from the earliest dates of American coinage through to current issues. Also include were over 60 pattern coins that were, in many cases, the forebearers of the designs that would become our circulating coinage. This collection had been exhibited at public schools to introduce numismatics to those who were interested in our nation’s monetary history.
In December 1997 we were once again honored to conduct auction sales in conjunction with the annual International Numismatic Convention in New York City. For this event we prepared three catalogs, two that focused on world coins and one that offered U.S. coins. In this way we were able to appeal to all the attendees of the convention, no matter what they were interested in collecting. Large attendance at the convention and a record number of bid sheets led to a very successful event.
The first catalog offered ancient and world coins, including the Ancient Greek and Roman Collection formed by Herbert M. Singer, coins from the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, and the Allen F. Lovejoy collection of late Roman and Byzantine gold. In addition, we were pleased to offer the early English Hammered Gold coinage of both Mr. Singer and Mr. Lovejoy, blended together to create a massive offering of this specialty. The sale also featured Renaissance English coinage, early gold Proof sets including the coinage of Victoria, and many other fabulous and rare gold and silver coins. Our world coin offering continued with Ancient Coins of the Islamic World, one of the largest offerings of this highly specialized series ever sold in America. Our cataloging team worked hard to create this stand-alone catalog and make it a reference guide for collectors. Although this was a convention dedicated to the international market, we closed out the year with a catalog featuring over 1,000 lots of United States gold, silver and copper. It was a very positive conclusion to another successful year at Stack’s.
