| Description: |
16.83 grams, 30.00 mm. Central arms with furled flags, legends around / denomination
within wreath, legends above, date below. Bright yellow gold with orange highlights,
prooflike reflectivity and much lustre. Some minor hairlines, tiny digs under ON inside
wreath on reverse. By virtue of the law of June 3, 1862, Uruguay adopted a gold standard
based on a peso of 1.687 grams, with the highest value coin to be issued being a doblon of
10 pesos, to weigh 16.87 grams. A tiny number of patterns in gold seems to have been
struck: the Ulex collection (1908) included 2 and 5 pesos with similar designs to the
present lot, but that famous cabinet lacked this largest and most impressive of the gold
patterns of 1870. Friedberg (where this specimen is the plate coin) does not price this
issue, only calling it "rare" and KM does not mention it at all, though it does
note gilt bronze specimens from these dies. When Wayte Raymond catalogued this piece for
auction in 1935— quite possibly the last time this type in gold was offered
publicly—he wrote that it was "said to be the only specimen known." It
realized the grand sum of $860 at the height of the Great Depression, the second highest
figure in the entirely auction, trailing only a gold 1862 British Columbia $20 at $875.
With the latter coin (later in the Farouk, Pittman, and Belzberg collections) now worth a
six-figure sum, this piece should not be far behind. While copper strikings from these
dies do appear on the market occasionally, we do not foresee that serious collectors will
have another chance to purchase a specimen in gold. ($25,000-40,000)From J.C. Morgenthau
and Co. (Wayte Raymond)'s sale of the Waldo C. Newcomer Collection, February 1935, Lot 559
(plated, $860); John H. Clapp Collection; Clapp estate to Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr., 1942.
Plated in Friedberg.
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