Gold Brockages

By Bill Snyder

Until recently, brockages of gold coins were viewed with scorn and/or suspicion. There were probably several reasons for this feeling.

• Scorn because, not so long ago, ALL mis-struck coins were distained by purists. If a coin collector came across a brockage (or an off-center, etc), he would probably just have tossed it into a drawer with other 'curiosities'.
• Suspicion because some 'experts' were telling collectors that Gold was too soft a metal to produce brockages. There is no way, they counseled, that a gold piece can act as a Die.

On the very infrequent occasions when a Gold brockage was offered for sale, there were no takers. The seller, feeling that he had something unusual, asked a high (???) price; the prospective buyer turned away, to look for coins with proven track records. There was no collector base, and therefore no dealer interest.

Well, almost no dealer interest. One astute dealer did pay attention to brockages (including the Gold ones). He was Richard Picker and his expertise was in a totally different area. Mr. Picker was a respected expert in U.S. Colonial coinage. It turns out that he had another interest. One that would have a profound effect on error collecting.

Richard Picker (1915-1983) was quite an exceptional person. When Stack's auction house sold his collection of Colonial & Early American Coins in 1984, they wrote in part "His alert mind, exceptional knowledge and integrity not only accorded him respect in the numismatic community, but the FBI also sought his assistance in its coin theft investigations." They wrote a whole page on his accomplishments. (I will be happy to scan it for anyone who would like a copy). When his coin collection was sold, it seemed like the end of an era.

So what does this have to do with brockages? Well, it was something of a surprise when, 5 years later, a Coin Galleries auction featured "The Richard Picker Collection of Brockages". WHAT PICKER COLLECTION OF BROCKAGES? It appears that the expert in Colonials had quietly been 'picking up' brockages (only the best, apparently) for many years.

What an offering it was! There were 121 full mirror brockages, ranging from a 1766 Pitt Token (very scarce in its own right) to 51 different U.S. Large Cent brockages to a stunning U.S. Capped Bust Half reverse brockage to choice brockages from various countries, and to (you guessed it) 8 Gold brockages. The gold ones were:

• one U.S. Type II (1854-1856) Gold Dollar (obv brockage)
• one French 10 Franc (obv brockage)
• four French 20 Francs obverse brockages [different Kings/coin types]
• one French 20 Franc one reverse brockage [dated 1820A]), and
• one English George I Half Guinea (obverse brockage).

An interesting thing about this auction was that the catalog gave no estimates. (Coin Galleries personnel were quoted as saying that they had no idea what the Gold brockages might bring). In the end, the gold pieces sold for between $385 (the little French 10 Franc) and $4,070 (the even smaller US Gold Dollar).

Every one of the brockages had found new homes.

The dam was broken. Brockages, and Gold brockages, had become respectable.

Notes

To show how little interest there was in past years, in the 1954 sale of Egyptian King Farouk's fabulous coin collection, one finds a few Gold brockages mixed into auction lots with common Gold coins. These lots, of 15 or more coins, sold at bullion prices.

The scan at the top of this article shows the Richard Picker half guinea brockage.

Bibliography

Sotheby & Company "The Palace Collections of Egypt", February 24 - March 3, 1954

Stack's, "The Richard Picker Collection of Colonial & Early American Coins", October 24, 1984

Coin Galleries, "Ancient and Modern Coins of the World and the United States", May 24, 1989

(This discussion of Gold brockages will continue with some notes about a particular brockage pair from Mr. Picker's collection).

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