Stack’s Bowers Galleries proclaims the public sale of Half II of the famed L.E. Bruun Assortment, the world’s most interesting non-public assortment of Scandinavian coinage, which has been insured for 500 million Danish kroner (about US$72.5 million). The public sale will likely be held March 13-16, 2025, on the Lodge Baur au Lac in Zurich, Switzerland.
Half II follows rapidly on the heels of the inaugural public sale of the L.E. Bruun Assortment: A Corpus of Scandinavian Financial Historical past. Held on September 14, 2024, in Copenhagen, Half I realized a complete of €14,820,900 (roughly $16.5 million), a report for a single numismatic public sale in Scandinavia. Among the many sale’s 286 Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish cash have been many particular person recording-setting costs, led by the distinctive in non-public arms Danish gold Noble of King Hans that offered for €1,200,000 (roughly $1.33 million), greater than 3 times the earlier world report for a Scandinavian coin.
Half II will supply a wider spectrum of Scandinavian numismatics, starting from the Viking interval by the nineteenth century, with a broader geographic attain as nicely. Augmenting the core Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish objects will likely be an in depth and much-anticipated providing of cash from the Danish duchies of Schleswig-Holstein, an space that was lengthy beneath Danish rule however was misplaced to Germany after the Second Schleswig Warfare in 1864.
The second providing from the Bruun Assortment can even current a larger variety of value factors, with an mixture estimate of €5 to €7 million. The roughly 700 objects to be offered subsequent March in Zurich will vary in worth from €1,000 to many a whole lot of 1000’s of euros, whereas most objects in Bruun Half I offered for over €10,000 every.
Starting within the late nineteenth century, Lars Emil Bruun, higher often called L.E. Bruun, amassed his fortune from the sale and export of numerous tens of millions of tins of world-renowned Danish butter. He invested a few of that fortune in actual property on the outskirts of Copenhagen, which noticed a marked rise in worth because the inhabitants of that metropolis tripled from 1890 by 1920. These enterprise successes allowed him to broaden the modest coin assortment he had begun as a boy within the 1850s into the world’s biggest non-public assortment of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden’s cash, medals, and paper cash. When the ultimate coin from the Bruun Assortment has been auctioned, this cupboard will stand as essentially the most useful assortment of worldwide cash ever to have been offered.
Bruun, who handed away on November 21, 1923, left behind not solely a powerful property but additionally an uncommon future for his coin assortment.
Having seen the destruction wreaked by World Warfare I, and keenly conscious that the British bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807 had destroyed practically the whole lot of the Danish capital, L.E. Bruun formulated a novel and modern will: his assortment of over 20,000 cash, medals, tokens, and notes can be held as a reserve for the Royal Danish Coin and Medal Assortment for 100 years after his dying. If the Royal Assortment was broken or stolen throughout that century, the L.E. Bruun Assortment would turn out to be a present to the Danish state. Nevertheless, if the Royal Assortment remained intact, it might be offered at public sale, with the proceeds benefitting Bruun’s direct descendants.
On November 21, 2023, that 100-year ready interval ran out, and with the Royal Danish Coin and Medal Assortment intact, L.E. Bruun’s incredible assortment of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish numismatics turned destined for the public sale block, with Stack’s Bowers Galleries awarded the contract for this world-renowned assortment.
The L.E. Bruun Assortment will likely be offered in a collection of reside auctions over the following three to 5 years, together with a collection of online-only auctions commencing in early 2025 that can characteristic extra modestly valued cash. Please go to www.StacksBowers.com/the-L-E-Bruun-Collection for extra data. For catalog requests or inquiries in regards to the L.E. Bruun auctions, contact Stack’s Bowers Galleries at +1 949.253.0916 (US) or +45.80 40 49 42 (Denmark) or e mail [email protected].
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