| Description |
The Virgil Brand Archives One of the Great CollectionsTwo large boxes of carefully maintained inventory records of coins sold by Johnson on behalf of Armin Brand, brother of the great collector Virgil Brand (1862-1926), from 1935 until Armin's death in 1946. Also present are inventories of consignments made to Johnson by Armin's widow Frieda Grommes Brand, and by Armin's daughter Jane von Boecklin (later Jane Brand Allen), until Johnson's death in 1947. The archives further include reference inventories of material consigned by Armin Brand to Arthur Kelly. Most of the content inventoried consists of foreign and ancient coins. Some items are keyed to Virgil Brand's inventory ledgers described below. Occasional cover letters are also included. The main inventories here present include over 2000 pages, more than half of them from between 1935 and 1938. It should be noted that while the 1936 papers include the highly important notes concerning the Dr. Thomas Hall collection, the Hall inventory of Connecticut coppers is being offered in this sale as a separate lot, as is Hall's inventory of his U.S. large cents. These segments of the inventories are present in this lot only in photocopy. The rest of the pages are original to the time period and are the copies made for and sent to B.G. Johnson for his use, and bear his annotations. Virgil M. Brand was one of the greatest coin collectors of his day--or, indeed, of any day. He became interested in coins while a young man in his 20s, and began buying widely. A successful businessman, he had the means to aggressively build his collection; this, coupled with a cosmopolitan attitude that brought him into contact with dealers from around the world, allowed him to form first-class collections not only of U.S. coins, but of ancient, medieval, and modern coins from around the world. Not content with purchasing individual coins, Brand bought entire collections when the opportunity presented itself, adding notable assemblages such as the Ferrari, Hall, and W�rtzbach collections to his own. At the time of his death, Brand's collection held at least 350,000 coins. Were the collection intact today, it could be worth half a billion dollars or more. Despite the massive size of his estate, Virgil brand died intestate. His brothers inherited his property, but frequently disagreed about its distribution. The coins were appraised by Burdette G. Johnson and Henry Chapman, with each brother receiving half the appraised value. Both brothers were more interested in liquidating the coins than in retaining them. However, Armin's daughter Jane decided to keep some of those remaining when her father died and she inherited his portion--these coins were kept off the market until the 1980s when they were sold through Bowers & Merena Galleries and Sotheby's on behalf of her estate. The gradual disposition of Virgil Brand's massive collection--over the course of decades, through numerous intermediaries, on behalf of various parties, and in different places--has created much confusion for those attempting to trace the provenance of significant coins to this collection. Manuscript ledgers now housed at the American Numismatic Society provide a marvelous record of the collection from the perspective of the initial purchase of the coins, but tracking their subsequent dispersal has been a difficult task, one made easier by the present archive. While Johnson did not handle the entirety of Brand's enormous holdings, he did handle much of it, and Johnson's records comprise an exceptionally useful resource for establishing the pedigrees of many of Brand's coins. Estimate $10,000. Ex: Eric P. Newman Numismatic Education Society.
Heritage Auctions 11/2018 (Newman XI), lot15104 (realized $3840).
Heritage link: http://www.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=1283&lotIdNo=11522 |
