This post isn't about a Canadian token, strictly speaking. It's about a Canadian auction house that looks to me as though they're greatly overstating the rarity (and value) of a British medallet whose Wellington obverse has been muled with a Broke token's seated Britannia reverse...a different token entirely. I'm finding it difficult to write a simple declarative sentence about the two tokens referenced in the auction description, so I'll paste that auction description in here first, as a starting point. (By the way, the sale is live online now -- see URL in my screen shot -- and closes on Monday evening, June 28. There's a bunch of Blacksmiths on the block too.)
Got all that?
The token at auction here is a British issue known as Withers 1580 (Davis Non-local 93), but the auction description seems to be making it "Canadian by association" due to the obverse die shared with a mule from the Partrick collection that was hammered down at US $4,800, including fees. See Lot #97201 in this year's March 21 sale.
That one is a striking token indeed, graded by NGC as AU 55 BN, and, as a discovery piece, almost certainly unique. Concerning that token, here's how Heritage tries to unscrew the inscrutable:
"Br-Unl. (cf. Br-879 for reverse), WE-Unl., WEL-Unl., Withers-1581...mule of the obv. of Davis Non-local, no. 93, and rev. of Br. 879, C.327, 329."
It took me about a half dozen readings of the Wellington/Blucher description from the Canadian auction before I finally realized that the claim that it's "only 1 of 2 to ever be offered to the public" means
not that there are only two examples of this token, which can easily be refuted, but that there are only two tokens
that bear this particular Wellington effigy. That makes it rare?
Okay, so once we've got that figured out, the obvious question is whether both of these will end up in the next edition of Charlton, or will it be the unique mule by itself, if even that?
Here's another question, particularly for collectors (like me) of the early 19th-century British token series, which can include many of these "Anglo-Canadian" issues: How does this particular Wellington/Blucher token in F-gF condition merit a $450 starting bid other than by association with the unique mule sold by Heritage three months ago? Admittedly, they're rare, and certainly worthy of The Withers RRR designation. I'd estimate that I've encountered only six or eight over the last 30 years -- all in higher grade than this one -- but I've never seen one sell for over GBP 75, and neither of mine cost anywhere near that...see below:
Am I alone (or crazy) in thinking that this auction house is "creating" something here out of nothing more than opportunism? Piggybacking on another token's true rarity? Misleading? I guess it'll be interesting to see if anyone takes them up on their starting bid.
Best to all!
Tom
Posted 06/26/2021 2:18 pm
