Indian gold dinar coin exchanges for five times its listing at Baldwin's

Part of the Yashoda Singh Indian coin collection, this gold dinar is from the reign of Samudragupta

Baldwin's put on a spectacularly diverse event during the Coinex season. Three days of auctions were packed full of interesting collections and single items from around the world and included an afternoon Token auction.

Bidders flew in from around the word to attend the auction, in particular the Indian and Islamic sections.

They competed with some fierce bidding from clients participating over the internet and lot 1628, an 1893 Bhavnagar Competition Medal, saw the power of live bidding as an online bidder from Europe competed with an Indian room bidder, pushing the hammer price to more than double the estimate.

Lot 366, an Edward III, Gold Noble, was the standout piece of the British section, selling for £14,160 against a pre‐sale estimate of £7,000 - 9,000. It was given a punchy estimate but strong bidding on the book saw it open at £6,500 with internets bidders then bidding against each other until it achieved its outstanding selling price.

A selection of banknotes (a fast expanding area for Baldwin's) produced some good results as did a small selection of Order, Decorations and Medals.

Lot 593, a 1779 Death of Captain Cook commemorative medal achieved a fantastic hammer price of £8,260 showing that, across the board, bidders were paying over the odds to buy the most interesting and rare items.

The Yashoda Singh collection of Indian coins sold for more than twice its pre‐sale estimate and contained lot 1012, a Samudragupta, Gold Dinar which achieved a truly staggering £24,780 against its estimate of £400‐500.

Horsepower... The Samudragupta gold dinar Indian coin surged past expectations

The results from the Indian and Islamic sections combined compounded Baldwin's dominance in this area.

Auction 72 was Baldwin's second token auction in as many years and attracted global interest from bidders in the room and online. The Australasian section included some very rare and exceptionally preserved items and so, understandably, proved to be the extremely popular with every single lot selling.  

Baldwin's Token specialist, Seth Freeman, commented:

"The Australasian token collection was an amazing group put together in the 1940s and 50s, which is how the owner was able to gather so many high quality and extremely rare tokens.

"It still amuses me that the collection was delivered to Baldwin's in a parcel of newspaper tied with string. The newspaper was The Times, from 1960! Unsurprisingly, the collection attracted a lot of attention and I am happy that the majority of the pieces have found their way back to Australia.

 "Overall, the auction was very strong with high prices in 18th and 19th century tokens, copper and silver. Baldwin's are planning to build this relatively niche area of numismatics over the coming years with a series of specialist auctions."

Check back soon for more news of Baldwin's future auctions.

Recent and related articles

· 1854-S two and a half dollar gold piece worth $230,000 and counting at Heritage | 10 October 2011

· Johnny Swing 'coin sofa' sits at the top of Rago's $3.39m Art Deco sale | 10 October 2011

· Gustav I coronation coin brings $240,000 in Kuenker's spectacular auction series | 4 October 2011

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Images: Baldwin's