It's a Good Day to Buy a Brasher Doubloon - Orange Country Register

OC Register
Thursday January 13, 2005

O.C. MAN PAYS $3 MILLION FOR FIRST U.S. GOLD COIN

(Fort Lauderdale, FL) -- An Orange County resident paid nearly $3 million to purchase the legendary Brasher Doubloon, the first gold coin made in the United States, at a public auction in Fort Lauderdale, Florida Wednesday night.  It was hand-struck in 1787 by George Washington's New York City neighbor, gold and silversmith Ephraim Brasher.

Steven Contursi, President of Rare Coin Wholesalers of Dana Point, California, and Dr. Donald Kagin of Tiburon, California jointly bought the gold piece for $2,990,000.  Contursi already owns a coin believed by many experts to be the first silver dollar made by the United States Mint in 1794.  (See Orange County Register story, "Silver piece, golden potential," August 2, 2003.)

Known as Brasher Doubloons, only ten examples survive today, and the coin purchased by Contursi and Kagin is unique.  It is the only one with the designer's initials, "EB," punched across the breast of an eagle depicted on the coin.  The other surviving examples have the initials on the eagle's wing.

"I woke up Wednesday morning and said to myself, 'It's a good day to buy a Brasher Doubloon.' This coin has tremendous historical significance because it was an early proposed design for our country's coins, and I've always wanted to own one," said Contursi.

"The $2,990,000 winning bid is the third highest price ever paid for a rare coin at a public auction," said Greg Rohan, President of Heritage Galleries of Dallas, Texas, the auction firm that sold the coin on behalf of an anonymous collector. 

The auction catalog described it as "the single most important coin in American numismatics."  It was last sold in an auction in 1981 when it brought $625,000.

Contursi plans to exhibit the coin at the American Numismatic Association's World's Fair of Money convention in San Francisco in July.

The fabled coin was the subject of a Raymond Chandler novel, "The High Window," and a 1947 movie, "The Brasher Doubloon," based on that Phillip Marlowe detective story. 

Another Brasher Doubloon with the designer's initials on the eagle's wing, sold for $2,415,000 in the Heritage Galleries auction, and a smaller style version was purchased for $690,000, according to Rohan. 

All prices include a 15 percent buyer's premium added to the "hammer price" of all winning bids.