Heritage Auctions presents The Gatsby Assortment, a unprecedented curation of pre-1960 South African coinage, unparalleled in its breadth and high quality. The gathering contains what’s believed to be the rarest, most complete and Most worthy assortment of Southern African numismatic objects in personal palms and represents the results of greater than 50 years of affected person and devoted connoisseurship.
The Gatsby Assortment will probably be offered at Heritage Auctions all through 2025 in three installments, the primary with a stand-alone session at Heritage’s New York International Numismatic Convention (NYINC) Auction January 13.
The overarching goal of the passionate collector who compiled this complete and extremely graded assortment was to incorporate the rarest cash and mint specimens representing the wealthy historical past of coinage in early Southern Africa. Spanning the very first prototypes of the fledgling mission station of Griquatown, by way of the Boer republics of the Orange Free State and Transvaal, and onward by way of the Union of South Africa interval, to a collection of the important thing modern-day Krugerrands, this assortment is an enduring testomony to the collector’s willpower to seize the best and most coveted points.
Constructing this outstanding assemblage has required not solely an intensive information of South African numismatics, but in addition outstanding networking and negotiating abilities to discretely safe the various immensely uncommon – and in some instances distinctive – items seen on this assortment, which is the results of intensive time, effort and monetary dedication that had been invested throughout its compilation.
This NYINC standalone will characteristic the crowning jewel of this assortment and of the whole South African numismatic discipline: the legendary “Single 9” overstrike of the 1898 Pond. Dubbed “The King of South African Cash,” this distinctive coin is undeniably one of the crucial invaluable and uncommon world cash extant. It boasts an interesting pedigree, together with being as soon as a part of King Farouk’s illustrious “Palace Collections of Egypt.” It was final privately traded to the present proprietor in 2010.
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