Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic 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 $100mn.\u00a0The bulk of its value remained underground for more than 50 years. In fear of the threat of a Nazi invasion of Europe, the collector \u2014 a Europe-based heir to a family business whose identity is not being disclosed \u2014 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.\u00a0He had begun what became \u201ca collecting obsession\u201d by buying gold bullion in the 1930s, when the Great Depression in the US meant \u201cthere was a loss of faith in the traditional banking systems so he looked at alternative ways to store value\u201d, the London-based Russo says. \u201cBy the end of the 1930s, he was going to major auctions and making sophisticated, rare finds in the field around the world,\u201d he says, going on to create what is now being dubbed the \u201cTraveller Collection\u201d.\u00a0Come the mid-1990s, the traveller\u2019s widow realised that, given her advancing age, it was time to unearth the treasure and subsequently called in NAC to produce an inventory and valuation. The buried coins were not revealed to the auctioneers until 2022 and have taken more than a year to catalogue, Russo says. Sifting through the treasure \u201cwas like going to a candy store every day for us\u201d, he enthuses.\u00a0Their finds have ranged from British sovereigns \u2014 which can sell for under \u00a31,000 each \u2014 to a 100 ducat gold piece from the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III of Habsburg that weighs 350g, and which Russo describes as \u201ca mythical coin\u201d. This dates to 1629 and is now valued at the equivalent of $1.4mn, \u201cthough we expect much more\u201d, he says. Back in 2018, a rare Polish gold 100 ducat coin, struck in 1621 for King Sigismund III Vasa, sold for $2.2mn in New York.The Traveller\u2019s meticulous diary keeping means that most of the pieces have a provenance that goes back to the 19th centuryThe Traveller coins are so numerous \u2014 and their combined value the highest ever for the public sale of such a collection \u2014 that NAC plans to offer them in about 15 auctions, phased over four years. The first sale, on May 20, will be of the top British coins from the collection, which number about 200 and date from the first machine-struck coins of Charles II\u2019s restoration monarchy in the late 17th century to those that marked the 1937 coronation of George VI, when the collector began buying in earnest.The mystery surrounding the traveller points to a characteristic of coin collectors, Russo says. \u201cThey are often private and reserved, as well as meditative, knowledgeable and very competent. You don\u2019t get occasional buyers,\u201d he adds, a distinct difference from the fine art arena.Certain engravers command higher values, such as the British Royal Mint expert and prodigious coin-maker William Wyon (1795-1851). The Traveller Collection includes examples of Wyon\u2019s Una and the Lion \u00a35 coins, struck in 1839, which show the young Queen Victoria as the calming, virtuous Una from Edmund Spenser\u2019s 16th-century epic poem \u201cThe Faerie Queene\u201d. A silver version is estimated at \u00a3150,000 and a gold coin at \u00a3250,000.Coins are also revered for the historic occasions that they commemorate, such as the ninth-century silver penny issued to celebrate Alfred the Great\u2019s claim of London from Danish invaders \u2014 one of which is in the Traveller Collection, estimated about $11,000. Coins that never come into full circulation are particularly prized, such as those submitted for approval that often show off an engraver\u2019s finest work \u2014 the Wyon coins of Queen Victoria are among these \u201cvery desirable objects\u201d, says David Guest, who runs his own numismatic business and is consulting on the English and French coins in the collection. The highest price ever paid for a coin at auction is $18.9mn and was for a so-called 1933 \u201cDouble Eagle\u201d coin, with a triumphant Lady Liberty on one side and an eagle in flight on the back, sold at Sotheby\u2019s in 2021. This $20 coin was never circulated due to the financial crises of the Great Depression.Forgeries do exist, although there are \u201cmany ways to establish authenticity\u201d, Russo says. \u201cWe see thousands of these objects all the time, our first impression is usually the right one,\u201d he adds, while there are also systematic comparisons with public specimens, and die studies that reveal specific strike techniques.Metals such as the gold and silver in the Traveller Collection do not deteriorate \u2014 the decades underground have not impacted their condition, experts say. A couple of the boxes were broken and the paper failed on some envelopes, on which their owner had recorded their acquisition and other details. In general, though, his meticulous diary keeping and the specific nature of coin series mean that most of the pieces have a provenance that goes back to the 19th century, \u201cmuch better than for most antiquities\u201d, Russo says.Meanwhile, coins are currently benefiting from a general upswing of collectible categories on the art market. \u201cIt\u2019s been buoyant for a while,\u201d Guest says. \u201cCovid helped as it is an area that lends itself to distance selling \u2014 you can get very good photographs, with a lot of detail. Price discovery is also much easier in a field where there are duplicates, and it is a very liquid asset.\u201d\u00a0Coins offer a piece of history that can be clasped in one hand. As Guest puts it: \u201cCoins were the mediation between leaders and their subjects, a projection of image and power. They were a way to celebrate peace or war. They were the social media of their day.\u201darsclassicacoins.comFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":254314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-254313","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254315,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254313\/revisions\/254315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}