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V19 2016 INDEX       E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 19, Number 30, July 24, 2016, Article 8

THE 1879 WEYL WANT LIST

Dave Stone of Heritage submitted this important postscript to last week's discussion of the 1884 Weyl catalog and the Dexter specimen of the 1804 dollar. Thanks! -Editor

Heritage catalogers John Sculley, Zeke Wischer, and I want to thank you for the kind review of our Coin World article (July 18, 2016 edition) on the 1884 Adolph Weyl catalog and the Dexter 1804 dollar that appeared in the last issue of The E-Sylum. The E-Sylum  always goes to great lengths to get things right. In that spirit, I would like to say a little more about possible appearance of the 1804 dollar in a “group lot in an 1879 auction” mentioned in Mark Ferguson’s book as reviewed by Bill Eckberg.

Weyl September 1879 catalog Beginning on page 82 of his September 1879 auction catalog (Weyl Figure 1), after the main body of the sale, Weyl printed several pages of what appeared to be numbered bulk lots of coins from different countries, under the heading Kauf-Gesuche! (Weyl Figure 2). Lot 83 in the list, in the section on United States coins, appeared to be a remarkable gathering of U.S. silver dollars, including many rare dates, the 1804 among them (Weyl Figure 3). Non-German-speaking numismatists, including myself, were very excited about the discovery of this list, which we took to be some kind of addendum to the sale, probably added at the last minute. This seemed to push the first European appearance of an 1804 dollar back five years before the famous Weyl sale of October 1884, and the only likely candidate for such an appearance was the Dexter dollar, whose prior history was unknown before that offering.

Weyl September 1879 catalog p82 Weyl September 1879 catalog p84

Several important references have mentioned this “appearance” in recent years, but Heritage catalogers became suspicious of it when we studied these catalogs for our auction description of the Mickley 1804 dollar in our 8/2013 Chicago Signature. The fact that all the coins were scarce-to-rare issues and there was no physical description of any of them seemed strange. Checking further, we discovered the Kaufe-Gesuche! was reprinted in Weyl’s next auction catalog in October of 1879 (it may appear in some other contemporary publications, as well, but these have not been reported).

Finally, we enlisted the help of Dagmar Byers, the German-speaking Vice President of Finance & Accounting at Heritage. She informed us that Kaufe-Gesuche! translates very roughly as Want List! Weyl was advertising to buy these foreign coins after his phenomenal success with the Fonrobert Collection in 1878, not offering them for sale himself. Therefore, the October 1884 Adolph Weyl sale remains the first appearance of the Dexter dollar and its prior history remains a mystery.

Weyl September 1879 catalog p82

Weyl September 1879 catalog p84

Mystery solved! I confirmed the translation myself by going to Google. Kaufe-Gesuche! comes back as Buy-Wanted! -Editor

Bill Eckberg adds:

It’s kind of an odd want list. I looked at the U.S. coppers in the list - it's interesting that some of them are relatively common dates, though many of the half cents are proof-only dates. Also, why no gold on the list?

To try Google Translate, see:
https://translate.google.com/

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
THE RARE AND IMPORTANT 1884 WEYL CATALOG (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n29a08.html)



Wayne Homren, Editor

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The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.

To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com

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