Here's some history of this Die
This coin Die was initially bought by an Canadian who lived in Japan and even went to University in Japan many years back. he made some connections in the seafood industry and in coins. At the time he was only collecting coins.
He's primary business right now is seafood export. Coin dealing was born out of sometimes needing to buy large groups of coins to get the few pcs he wanted.
After returning to Canada and working in seafood as well as trading in coins, he was forwarded the auction catalogs from The Ministry of Finance in Tokyo. Of course, these were well known in Japan, but surprisingly not so many outside of Japan were aware of this mass liquidation of mostly gold coins.
There were odds and end including the
Trade dollar die, some paper and some silver, but 97.5% of the 3 auctions were gold.
There were 5 primary buyers of this material. While certainly tons of collectors bought 1 or a few pcs, but 5 of them bought huge inventories. Two major Tokyo companies, one of which he eventually bought out, a Germans co and a UK co.
He bought the finest, and until the auctions, unknown SHOWA 5 5 YEN gold coin which graded like the finest 1921 Canadian 5c silver ) as well as over two hundred others pieces. He created markets for this mostly in Europe.
The UK co's material was almost entirely bought out by Heritage which is why for awhile, Heritage consistently offering Meiji era gold in their auctions.
He was fortunate to have created a deep mkt for this material in Geneva and eventually one Tokyo company sold him their inventory. Shortly afterwards, Heritage through Cris and Todd offered him their remaining UK purchases inventory.
He have also consigned many of the better Japanese coins Heritage has sold post Ministry sales. At one time, among his consignments was this very same
Trade dollar rev die. He had a reserve on it.
You can go into the Heritage web site. Check under 2009 JANUARY NEW YORK SIGNATURE WORLD COIN AUCTION #3004. It is lot # 21821.
You will see the
Trade dollar die. It did not reach his reserve at that sale and He had to do a buy it back .
What's important here in creating an additional sense authencity is that Heritage would never EVER put anything in their auction that is not 100% authentic.
This is were I got in contact with the seller and get this Die
Posted 10/15/2015 6:39 pm
