Dutch Coin Sold For Record Price

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In 1628, Piet Hein conquered the silver fleet in the Bay of Matanzas in Cuba. The immense wealth seized were then able to be used in the conflict with the Spaniards. Among other things, the siege and subsequent defeat of s'Hertogenbosch were partially financed by the defeat of the Silver Fleet, which was doubtless a major turning point in the Eighty Years War. The West Indies Company (WIC) now had the financial resources to take on Spanish and Portuguese colonial interests. Through a large naval attack with 67 ships and 7000 men under the command of Hendrick Lonck and Colonel Diederick van Waerdenburgh, a large area of Brazil near the city of Recife (Pernambuco)was taken from the Portuguese in 1630. The Dutch introduced, among other things, freedom of religion. After the installment of Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen as Governor of Dutch Brazil, free trade was re-introduced, a significant event, given that the area was vital to the sugar trade.There are various articles and publications concerning the use of gold coins, especially the „portugues," or Portugalöser, in Brazil (see the article by Antonio M. Trigueros in The Numismatist of April 2016, the article by Marcel van der Beek in de Beeldenaar #3 of 2017 and the eight page article, also by Tigueros, in the magazine Muntkoerier, # 4, of 2017). From these and other articles, it can be surmised that around the year 1640, a rumor was circulating in the Netherlands that the Portuguese ten cruzado coin was circulating in Brazil at an exchange rate of 75 Dutch guilders per coin, while the coin only had a gold content of 50 Guilders. As a result of this "knowledge," Portugalösers were being bought up in Amsterdam at a price of 60 to 61 guilders. It thus came as no surprise that under the pretext of striking "commemorative medals," the cities of Zwolle and Deventer began to produce these lucrative coins. When the authorities of the Netherlands got wind of this dubious practice, further minting was forbidden in 1641. In this short period, the coiner of Deventer had, by his own admission, minted 10 to 20 of these pieces. In Amsterdam, it was reported that somewhere between 20 and 30 of the Deventer Portugalösers were shipped to Brazil. An exact accounting cannot be reconstructed, but it is clear that there was never a mass production.The fact that these coins were not, after all, readily accepted at a rate of 75 guilders in Pernambuco as previously assumed, combined with the prohibition of further production resulted in an extremely limited number of coins struck.For decades now, the famous specimen from the collection of the Marquis de Costa has been considered to be the only surviving exam-ple of the illustrious Deventer Portugalösers. The coin from this collection (the coin offered here) is illustrated with a photo in the book"Moeda dos descobrimentos prestígio de Portugal no mundo", published in 1983.