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A mysterious trove of rare coins, hidden from the Nazis, goes to auction
The money of long-dead kings and vanished sovereignties is still good
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By Melanie Gerlis
Financial Times, London
via MSN News, Redmond, Washington
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Finding buried treasure is a fantasy that has become a reality for the specialist coin auctioneers, Numismatica Ars Classica (NAC). They have been entrusted to sell a single collection of about 15,000 mostly gold and silver coins spanning ancient Greece to 20th-century Britain and valued for insurance at more than $100 million.
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The bulk of its value remained underground for more than 50 years. In fear of the threat of a Nazi invasion of Europe, the collector -- a Europe-based heir to a family business whose identity is not being disclosed -- buried more than 10,000 coins in his garden, explains Arturo Russo, director and co-owner of NAC. Most were put into envelopes and placed in cigar boxes with the collection, then sealed in about a dozen aluminium casings.
The owner shared their location only with his wife and then, soon after the Nazis did invade, died of a stroke.
He had begun what became "a collecting obsession" by buying gold bullion in the 1930s, when the Great Depression in the United States meant "there was a loss of faith in the traditional banking systems, so he looked at alternative ways to store value," the London-based Russo says. "By the end of the 1930s, he was going to major auctions and making sophisticated, rare finds in the field around the world," he says, going on to create what is now being dubbed the "Traveller Collection". ...
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