Twice, the auctioneer asked Sperber if she was sure of the bid. With the monster assault made, the room fell silent. They would make a blowout bid to scatter the competition like so much coin-collecting collateral damage.Īs Morelan recalls, the din inside the auction room forced him to repeat his instructions before Sperber could hear him. In the end, their battle plan was simple: shock and awe. Steve Contursi, CEO Rare Coin Wholesalers This coin was not like any of the other ones. When I saw it, my heart dropped to the floor. Bruce, being the uber-collector that he is, just had to have this coin.” “So we came in there in a real paranoid state. “We were bogged down in that war fog - you know, figuring that this guy was bidding, that guy was gonna buy it,” recalled Sperber, the founder of Legend Numismatics, a rare-coin firm based in New Jersey. Another wrote a book about the coin’s high quality and cultural relevance.īack at the 2013 auction, the mood among bidders was tense, even cutthroat. One was so reluctant to part with it, the sale came only after his death. Over the next two centuries, the coin up for auction that winter night had changed hands among private collectors. Secretary of State Edmund Jennings Randolph mentioned the minting of the inaugural silver dollars in a letter to President George Washington, who some numismatic scholars believe might even have received one as a historic memento. Rated at the highest-level “specimen” quality, the 1794 dollar never went into general circulation. In October, following seven years of coveted ownership, Morelan sought to sell his prized coin at an auction held at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Partner Laura Sperber was inside the exclusive Estrela penthouse suite of Manhattan’s Le Parker Meridien hotel, staring down a phalanx of other suitors seeking the hand of the exotic Lady Liberty posed on the face of the coin.Įxperts believe the coin is the first silver dollar ever struck at the nation’s new Philadelphia mint in the fall of 1794, a timeless artifact that provides a unique glimpse into America’s earliest days of independence. That evening, the 58-year-old Morelan, an entrepreneur who bankrolls his coin-collecting passion through an electrical contracting empire, sat on the living room couch of his home in Southern Highlands, calling the bidding shots by cellphone. In a move that set the coin-pursuing world abuzz, Bruce Morelan announced his intention to put his coveted coin up for auction at an October event in Las Vegas. Their prize - the 1794 Flowing Hair silver dollar - would demand the highest amount paid for any coin ever sold worldwide. 24, 2013, preparing for an event at a swank New York City hotel.Īnticipating their competitor’s strategies, they’d collected loose talk and reconnaissance, finally ready to make their audacious bid for one of the most-coveted coins in American history. That’s where Bruce Morelan and his partner found themselves on Jan. In the rarefied world of exclusive coin buying, there’s a period of high anxiety before any major auction that collectors liken to the fog of war. But as the value of these coins increases, you’re forced to keep them under lock and key,” says Morelan, who instead keeps a framed photograph of the coin at his Las Vegas home. “In the old days, you could keep a coin like this at home.
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