Auction 95 Highlights

Welcome to Smalls Auctions Sale 95

We begin this sale with a good selection of Jewellery items that should appeal to a broad range of tastes. We have included a good selection of cufflinks for our male clients who may have forgotten over the last few months the routine of dressing up to go to work. For the optimists amongst us maybe its time to start trying on those business shirts.

The major collectable items on offer in this sale is a selection of rare New South Wales 1813 Fifteen Pence coins known colloquially as ‘Dumps.’ They date back to shortly after the start of European settlement of Australia when it was set up as a ‘dumping’ ground for the criminal classes of Great Britain. It was certainly not an auspicious beginning for a fledgling nation which really owes its start to the American Revolutionaries whose victory cut off that nation as a permanent ‘holiday’ destination for Britain’s recidivists.

One of the most intriguing of these coins is a rare ‘Type E3’ Dump struck in copper. This coin, along with a copper ‘D2’ Dump were once owned  by Dr William Mira the co-author of numerous works on Australia’s Holey Dollars and Dumps. He speculated that this copper trial striking was used to “test the machine(ry)” before it was used to strike the Silver coins for circulation. A metal analysis of the Copper E3 Dump indicates that it was derived from one of the ‘pure’ copper pennies struck in 1797 at the Soho Mint and which were shipped to Australia. Recent research points to the ‘E3’ as being the first struck of the four recognised types of dumps which would make this coin which was struck as a ‘trial’ the leading candidate as the earliest known surviving example of this important coinage.

Of perhaps greater importance is a ‘new’ B6 Dump also struck in copper. This appears to be a ‘unique trial’ for an unadopted type and it is speculated was struck between the production of the Type ‘C’ and Type ‘A’ dumps. It is not often that you are offered an opportunity to own something that does not even exist in the nation’s top museums so to describe it as a ‘museum quality’ coin is certainly not an overstatement.

The sale continues with a selection of quality Australian and world coins concluding with a cameo selection of World banknotes.

Happy bidding

Smalls Auctions