Greater than 60 years within the making, the well-known assortment of Rhode Island numismatist Richard August will likely be supplied by Stack’s Bowers Galleries in a collection of auctions in 2025 and 2026.
August was a towering determine throughout the close-knit group of early American coin and medal lovers. He was a pioneer within the fields of Betts medals and colonial paper cash and an exacting builder of selection units of most main pre-Federal copper collection. Starting many years in the past, Richard was an early adopter of accumulating colonial-era cash from Europe’s New World empires alongside cash extra explicitly made for America. He got here to deal with these cash with as a lot vigor as on their Purple E book-listed counterparts, amassing necessary collections of cash from Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, and the West Indies. Choices from August’s extremely alternative collections of cash from England, Eire, and Scotland would be the first cash from the cupboard to be supplied, slated for our January 2025 New York Worldwide Numismatic Conference (NYINC) sale.
Richard August was properly often called a numismatist and was a fixture at reveals all around the nation for many years, notably these in his native New England. Past his life in cash (a full-time ardour since earlier than he attended the College of Virginia within the late Nineteen Fifties), Richard was a high-level math trainer and tutor, a distance runner and working coach, and a passionate practitioner of hobbies starting from gardening to fish husbandry to capturing (he competed on the rifle workforce at UVA). His exceptional reminiscence and data base, as deep because it was broad, impressed his numismatic colleagues, however the assortment his experience allowed him to amass impressed his pals and rivals as properly.
Dick’s pre-Federal copper collections are among the many best ever assembled, with distinctive varieties current within the Connecticut, New Jersey, and Fugio collection. Alongside along with his Vermont, Massachusetts, Machin’s Mills, and different notable copper subcategories, these collections embody traditional rarities and Situation Census examples, alongside fascinating die states and up to date counterfeits. These have been gathered by means of savvy cherrypicking and participation at main auctions courting again to the Sixties. His participation within the well-known 1966 C.H. Stearns sale resulted in not solely the enlargement of his Massachusetts silver holdings, but in addition the acquisition of most or all of Stearns’ early American medals in a personal transaction. This shaped the idea of his extremely necessary collections of Betts medals and Washingtoniana, and each collection are replete with notable rarities.
His world coin holdings are intensive, with notably notable collections from Latin America and the British Isles. Targeted on the period of American colonization, roughly 1492 to 1830, Dick’s assortment comprised spectacular date runs of cash in each collectible denomination of copper and silver, with some gold highlights as properly. His cash of the British Isles are notable for his or her high quality; alternatives centered on Seventeenth-century cash of England, Eire, and Scotland will likely be supplied within the January 2025 NYINC sale.
Betts medals, Washingtoniana, and paper cash are anticipated to cross the public sale block in March/April 2025, adopted by choose Latin American, Fugio coppers, and extra in Stack’s Bowers Galleries’ August 2025 International Showcase auctions. A serious providing of colonial cash is scheduled for the agency’s November 2025 official Whitman Expo Auction, held in cooperation with the Colonial Coin Collectors Membership (C4).
For extra info on the Richard August Assortment and different upcoming Stack’s Bowers Galleries auctions–or to inquire about consigning–name 800-458-4646 or e mail [email protected].
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