A gold coin from 1496 was sold on Saturday for approximately DKK 8.9 million at an auction in the Odd Fellow Palæet in Copenhagen.
This appears from the website of the coin auction house Stack’s Bowers Galleries.
It is a gold coin from a record-breaking collection of 20,000 coins that belonged to the wealthy Lars Emil Bruun.
The gold coin from 1496, which was sold as the first during Saturday’s auction, was estimated to bring in between 2.2 and 4.4 million kroner.
But when there was a hammer blow, the sale price was 1.2 million euros – 8.9 million kroner.
According to the director of the auction house’s Danish department, Michael Fornitz, the coin is Scandinavia’s first dated gold coin.
“Until now, the coins were made in very small silver coins, and suddenly a coin like this one comes along, with a specific year and the king’s name”, says Michael Fornitz.
May not be sold until 100 years after death
Lars Emil Bruun died in 1923, and he had written in his will that the collection could only be sold 100 years later.
He worked as a butter wholesaler and made a fortune selling and exporting canned butter to large parts of the world.
In addition, he made a lot of purchases of agricultural land north of Copenhagen and subdivided the land for villa construction.
Bruun’s coin collection is considered to be the most valuable in the world ever put up for sale at auction.
The collection covers both Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Schleswig-Holstein coins.
The coins have been deposited in a room at Frederiksborg Castle and then in the National Museum’s basement.
The National Museum also had the right of first refusal for part of the collection. With money from a support association, the museum has bought seven coins at market price.
A total of 286 coins are up for auction on Saturday. It will take the next five years to sell the total of 20,000 coins.
Overall, the coins are estimated to bring in half a billion kroner.
ritzau
Source: politiken.dk
