Rare silver coin struck before the American Revolution sets auction record, selling for $2.52 million

By Issy Ronald, CNN

(CNN) — An American silver coin dating back to the 17th century, before the United States was founded, has sold for a record-breaking $2.52 million at auction, eight years after it was discovered in an old cabinet in Amsterdam.

The threepence coin was struck in 1652 in Boston just weeks after the first mint in the then-British colony had opened, according to a statement released Monday by Stack’s Bowers Galleries, which handled the sale.

Although the coin is only about the size of a nickel and has a silver value of just $1.03 on today’s market, its age and ties to American history have made it the most expensive non-gold US coin struck before the founding of the United States Mint, the auction house added.

When this coin was found in 2016 in an old cabinet in the Netherlands, its owner was unsure of its historical significance for it was in a pasteboard box that simply said “Silver token unknown/ From Quincy Family/B. Ma. Dec, 1798.”

It was only after extensive research, testing, analysis and comparison with another surviving specimen that its true value was identified and subsequently verified by the PCGS, an independent body that grades rare coins.

When the note attached to the coin was written in 1798, coins made at the Boston Mint in 1652 had already become a prized possession for collectors.

Distinguishable by their simple NE stamp representing New England on one side, and their value in pence in Roman numerals on the other, these coins were already extremely rare since it’s likely they were only made in this style for a few months that year.

The Boston Mint had defied the British crown’s authority to produce coins, representing New England’s “growing sense of identity as separate from the mother country and its determination to regulate its own economy,” according to the Massachusetts Historical Society.

After the American Revolution, the coins it had produced became vogue even in England.

English collector Thomas Brand Hollis wrote to then-American ambassador to the Netherlands John Adams in 1781 asking for help in sourcing one of these coins. In turn, Adams wrote to ask his wife, Abigail, for help since her great-grandfather had been the stepbrother of John Hull, the silversmith who minted these coins.

Just one other threepence coin of this type is known to have survived to the present day and it is in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society, making this specimen the only one available to private collectors. Another coin is perhaps still in existence after it was stolen from Yale College sometime before the 1960s, although its whereabouts is unknown.

This coin was subject to an intense, 12-minute bidding battle that auctioneer Ben Orooji called “an exhilarating ride and a career highlight,” as it fetched more than three times its presale estimates.

Other historic US coins have fetched vast sums at auction too. A rare 1794 silver dollar believed to be one of the first – if not the first – made by the US mint sold for $10 million in 2013.

Meanwhile, a rare 1933 “Double Eagle” coin, one of the last gold coins ever struck for circulation in the US, sold for $18.9 million in 2021.

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