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Lot 150
Description:
Very Rare
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Notes:
- Although now fully accepted as early experimental strikes, the very rare E3 Dump and the extremely rare C4 Dump, have at times been looked upon warily as possible contemporary forgeries. Only a handful of each are known and generally in poor grades, and so the surviving examples can look a little like works in progress when compared to the more finished A1 and D2 types. However, comparisons of the coins’ format and similarities in the lettering used on the four types leaves little doubt that they were all the product of William Henshall, with the C4 and E3 types being obvious attempts at early design. Certainly the varieties of the dumps have been long recognised, and history records that a C4 Dump was exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, while examples of the C4 and E3 dumps are pictured in the 1921 publication "Australasian Tokens & Coins” by Dr Arthur Andrews. Cataloguers quite often relied on arcane words such as ‘sinister’ and ‘dexter’ to distinguish the various types and it was not until 1974 that Dr W Mira an acknowledged specialist in Australian Colonial coins used an alpha numeric system to re-classify the dumps into four distinct types after studying “150 attributable specimens”. The four obverse and reverse types that he labelled, and their pairings, have been adopted as the standard descriptors of the four known circulating types. In his 1977 publication “A Classification of the New South Wales Dumps” he wrote that a “further 100 dumps have been classified directly, and 50 by correspondence. No specimen has been found which varies from those proposed in 1974 and this typing system is now utilised by many cataloguers, both within Australia and overseas.” To date the combinations of obverse and reverse dies that resulted in the A1 (approximately 70% of surviving examples), D2 (25%), E3 (3%) and the C4 (2%) appears to cover all known circulating dumps, although it would be interesting to review Mira’s early research notes as sequencing would suggest that at one time he most likely considered the possibility of a ‘Type B’ obverse. On our enquiries, his co-collaborator on the publication “The Holey Dollars of New South Wales” could shed no light on why ‘B’ was skipped in his obverse types. However, we certainly believe that there is justification for the recognition of a ‘Type 5’ reverse resulting in an ‘A5’ Dump, as it has been observed that some of the high-grade A1 dumps have significant serifying on the reverse letters when compared to the block type found on most A1 dumps. This characteristic is harder to pick up on worn dumps, and so it is difficult to determine the split, but it would appear that the plainer reverse lettering was probably the result of the original A1 reverse die being re-cut and simplified quite early on in production. It is our conviction that the E3 dumps were the first type to be struck by Henshall although only in very small numbers, as it is estimated that only ten to fifteen have survived. There are even fewer of the C4 variety which are also thought to be the result of Henshall's experiments. Smalls Auctions October Sale offers an E3 Dump in good Fine condition. Although it has porous surfaces, probably as the result of being buried, it is one of the better detailed examples of this rare type. The coin has an excellent provenance being once owned by Pat Boland the curator of the Sydney Mint Museum. He originally purchased the dump from coin dealer Dave Raymond in March 1946 for the then significant sum of 4 Pounds 5 Shillings.
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7 October 2017 11:00 AEDT
Paddington, Sydney, Australia
Smalls Auctions
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Bid Increments
| From: | To: | Increments: |
|---|---|---|
| A$0 | A$99 | A$5 |
| A$100 | A$999 | A$10 |
| A$1,000 | A$4,999 | A$50 |
| A$5,000 | A$9,999 | A$100 |
| A$10,000 + | A$250 |