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Peter McAuslane’s Token - The highlight of the Geoffrey Bell collection

Currency:CAD Category:Coins & Paper Money / World Coins - Canada Start Price:43,000.00 CAD Estimated At:45,000.00 - 50,000.00 CAD
Peter McAuslane’s Token - The highlight of the Geoffrey Bell collection
SOLD
43,000.00CAD+ buyer's premium (8,600.00)
This item SOLD at 2015 May 28 @ 20:02UTC-4 : AST/EDT
The Cataloguers have taken every reasonable measure to ensure that all the lots are as described by Geoffrey Bell Auctions. Many of the lots are third party graded by PCGS, PMG, ICCS - We feel these are the most recognized grading companies in the industry.
Peter McAuslane’s Token - The highlight of the Geoffrey Bell collection BR 956, CH NF-2, issued in St. John’s, Newfoundland, by a merchant of Prince Edward Island who had business interests in both places. Peter McAuslane (1772-1842) owned property in Charlottetown, a ship named the Hannah, and a farm at Rustico on what is today Robinson’s Island on the north shore of PEI. His token is excessively rare. The first example turned up in 1878 and was acquired by R.W. McLachlan, who reported on it in The Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, VII, 2 (October 1878): 95. McLachlan was subsequently the first to catalogue the token in his Canadian Numismatics (1886) as no. 486. A second specimen did not turn up until 1893. A specimen in the 1925 W.W.C. Wilson Sale, said to be EF -- not the present example -- sold as lot 619 for the incredible sum of $135, which was some measure of its desirability. It is not certain how many examples exist today. Those few that have appeared in recent years have all been brought out of the ground by metal detectors on PEI and the tokens have suffered accordingly, with cracked planchets and severely corroded surfaces. The present example may be the finest known in private hands, the equal of the specimen in the Bank of Canada Collection. This is the specimen that was plated by Courteau in his “The Coins and Tokens of Newfoundland” in The Numismatist (February 1930), said by him to be in the Ludger Gravel Collection at that time. Howard Gibbs appears to have acquired it from the disposal of the Gravel collection in 1935 and in turn sold it as lot 912 at the 1952 ANA auction where it was purchased by John J. Ford, Jr. It was sold with Ford’s Canadian tokens by Stack’s Bowers in August 2013 as lot 21058 where it was described as Extremely Fine. Some insignificant surface dirt and a tiny carbon spot at LL of ALL on the reverse. Brass, beaded borders, (struck ever so slightly off-centre), straight reverse, plain edge, 19.6mm, 2.75gms or 42.5 grains. EF.


Note this lot is part of the Geoffrey Bell Collection.