|
|
Brazil, Serro Frio gold ingot #114, Dom Pedro II, 1832, with original guia, unique and extremely important, plated in Prober. KM-Gb6. 39.74 grams. Brazil, Serro Frio gold ingot #114, Dom Pedro II, 1832, with original guia, unique and extremely important, plated in Prober. KM-Gb6. 39.74 grams. Brazil, Serro Frio gold ingot #114, Dom Pedro II, 1832, with original guia, unique and extremely important, plated in Prober. KM-Gb6. 39.74 grams.
Sold for $218,500 (including buyers fees -15%) Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC Treasure and World Auction# 10 - October 25, 2011 |
The pseudo-monetary gold ingots of Brazil, made from 1778 to 1833, are among
the rarest items of South American numismatics. They are comparable to the
U.S. pioneer gold issues of the California Gold Rush of 1848–1855, as they
were made from natural gold that merchants and prospectors brought in to
official foundries for testing, smelting, marking and taxation. Typically
the ingots were subsequently sent to Europe and melted down, making them
quite rare as a group today. Rarer still is each ingot’s original guia
("guide"), the official one-page document produced at the foundry legalizing
the ingot as currency and bearing the ingot's number, owner, purity, weight
and date, plus the foundry name and signatures of its officials at the
bottom to show that the tax was paid. Essentially a “birth certificate” for
each ingot, the guia was a fragile and somewhat unassuming piece of paper
that was almost always lost or inadvertently destroyed down the line, but it
bore the utmost importance in establishing legitimacy and value. Probably
fewer than 10 surviving ingots still have their guias.
Within this rare issue, the present ingot is even rarer as being from the
foundry of Serro Frio, a relative latecomer accounting for only about 10% of
the existing specimens. Records indicate that about 20 foundries were
opened, but only 8 of them are represented among the 218 or so ingots known
today. They appear to have been made in smaller numbers in later years, as
only 8 pieces are known to exist with dates in the 1830s. The extant ingots
on record and their foundries are as follows, with their dates of
production:
Foundry of Sabará: 85 specimens (1778 to 1833)
Foundry of Mato Grosso: 21 specimens (1784 to 1820)
Foundry of Goiás: 30 specimens (1790 to 1823)
Foundry of Villa Rica: 44 specimens (1794 to 1818)
Foundry of Rio das Mortes: 7 specimens (1796 to 1818)
Foundry of Serro Frio: 21 specimens (1809 to 1832)
Foundry of Cuiabá: 9 specimens (1821 to 1822)
Foundry of Ouro Preto (formerly Vila Rica, after 1823): 1 (1828)
A bit over half of these are in private hands; more than one third of the
known pieces are permanently housed in big museums like the Museu Historico
Nacional (Rio de Janeiro), the Banco Central do Brasil (Brasilia), the Museu
de Arte Sacra (São Paolo), the Museu Numismático do Banco do Espírito Santo
(Lisbon) and even the American Numismatic Society and Smithsonian
Institution in the United States. Significantly, only two of the 36
specimens from the Carlos Marques da Costa collection recently acquired by
the Museu Numismático do Banco do Espírito Santo have original guias.
(Featured in the Sotheby’s auction of May 30, 1997, these 36 ingots were
purchased privately and the auction was cancelled.) Many important
numismatic museums and collections around the world have no Brazilian ingots
at all.
It
is also important to note that our specimen, as one of the last ones made,
is one of only about a half-dozen surviving specimens issued under Dom Pedro
II (1831-1889) “the Magnanimous,” last ruler of the Empire of Brazil, an
entirely different government from the Portuguese monarchy under which the
earlier pieces were made. Curiously, the accompanying guia was pre-printed
in 1755 but completed and modified by hand in 1832 to reflect the new regime
and rates. It is hard to imagine a numismatic item with more patent
history!
In fact, this 1832 Serro Frio ingot is the only Dom Pedro II specimen of
this foundry ever offered at auction in the United States with its original
guia. For comparison, the much-heralded Eliasberg collection, sold in 2005,
which contained 4 ingots, had no Serro Frio, no Pedro II, and no guias. A
relatively common Sabará ingot in Eliasberg sold for $77,625. While the two
specimens in the Norweb collection (1997) included a Serro Frio, both ingots
were of João VI, and neither had a guia.
In addition to collector interest, these rare ingots have drawn the
attention, admiration and study of a number of famous numismatic firms and
researchers over the past century and a half. The most ardent student of
these bars was the numismatic scholar and author Kurt Prober, who in fact
once owned this very specimen in the late 1940s (more about that later).
Even in their own time these ingots were considered special. The idea behind
these ingots was simply to monetize new gold into circulating currency and
to make sure taxes were paid in the process. In fact, they were subject to
confiscation without notarized guias; their prescribed monetary value in
réis was written on the accompanying guias and not stamped on the ingots
themselves.
The ingot itself is basically a flat, irregular, extended rectangle, approx.
69 x 11 x 3mm, with most of its stamped markings on one side, including
(from left to right): circular seal bearing the arms of the Empire of
Brazil; serial number N 114 above the numbers 1 – 3 – 06 for 1 onça 3
oitavas 6 grão (1 ounce 3 eighths 6 grains); fineness as “23” and "TOQUE"
(meaning struck in 23 karat) above the date 1832 in incuse boxes; and an
intertwined monogram AAB (for assayer Antonio Avila Bittencourt) within an
incuse circle with beaded border. Three ribbed lines in the fields between
the stamps are security cancelations to prevent further stamping. The
reverse shows the round seal for the Serro Frio foundry, showing the first
two letters SE(RRO) at the bottom. While the seals are typically weaker, the
middle punches are very sharply struck and even lustrous inside (virtually
as made).
The guia is fundamentally intact but typically somewhat damaged, once folded
and now riddled with small holes in one quadrant that bear witness to its
age, but with all important details still readable, including the ingot
number N 114, date, fineness, weight and foundry. Like the other known
guias, this one shows the quantity of gold brought to the smelting house (“1
Onca e 4 Oitavas” = 1 ounce and 4 eighths) and the percentage taken by the
government, known as the vintena (5%) in the amount of 43-1/5 grão (grains).
The owner is listed as “Joze Per(a) de Mag (es.) do P(e) Joao Sim (oes) de
Sz(a). e Socied(e).” The document was originally issued for the foundry of
Villa Rica (within the same province of Minas Gerais) and modified for the
new foundry by crossing out “Rica” (in two places) and overwriting with “do
Ppe” for Villa do Principe, which was later re-named Serro Frio. The
official signatures at the bottom are “Esq. Nepomuceno” and “Dr. Simões.” As
previously mentioned, the guia was pre-printed in 1755, but the date on the
document was hand-corrected to 1832. One other interesting modification is
the change from the printed word “Real” (royal) to “Nacional” (national),
reflecting the change to a parliamentary monarchy in 1831. Handwritten on
the back, in the upper-right corner, is the circulating value of the ingot
as “17$380,” meaning 17,380 réis, a sizable sum in its time.
Provenance:
The first appearance of this ingot on the numismatic market was as #3709 in
the 1906 catalog of the Estate of Joaquim Gomes de Souza Braga. The next
appearance, in 1936, was in a sales price list from Santos Leitão e Cia of
Rio Janeiro (item #79). In 1941 the bar was catalogued by Kurt Prober in his
monograph Ouro em Pó e em Barras Meio Circulante no Brasil 1754-1833 (listed
with its guia and plated as #423 in the 1990 edition), and in fact Prober
himself acquired the ingot from Jael de Oliveira Lima in 1947—but without
its guia. Oliveira found the guia in 1948 and sold it separately to Prober,
who had already sold the ingot without its guia to a Dr. C.H Townsend.
Prober then bought the bar back from Townsend and offered the newly reunited
ingot and guia for sale in the price list of coin dealer Hermann Porcher in
1948, which was the last time it was publicly offered.
References:
American Numismatic Rarities (New York). The Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr.
Collection of World Coins & Medals, auction of April 18-19, 2005.
Costilhes, Alain. “Revising Brazilian Gold Bars,” in Actas -- Proceedings –
Actes of the XIII Congreso Internacional de Numismática in Madrid in 2003
(coord. by Carmen Alfaro, Carmen Marcos y Paloma Otero), Madrid, 2005.
Marques da Costa, Carlos. “As Barras de Ouro do Brasil - Sua Ordenação em
Catálogo,” in Atas do Primeiro Congresso luso-brasileiro de Numismática, São
Paulo, 2000.
Prober, Kurt. Ouro em Pó e em Barras Meio Circulante no Brasil 1754-1833, 2
vols, Rio de Janeiro, 1990.
Sotheby’s (London). Brazilian Gold Currency Bars, auction of May 30, 1997.
Spink & Sons. “An Unpublished Specimen of Brazilian Gold Bar Currency,
Issued by the Gold Refinery of Villa Rica, 1814,” in Numismatic Circular,
vol. XI, number 124, London, March 1903.
SpinkAmerica (New York). The Norweb Collection of Brazilian, Bolivian,
Colombian and Chilean Coins, auction of March 4, 1997.
-Reproduction of the articles in whole or part is strictly prohibited without written permission of the author/s.
Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC
P.O. BOX 1964 | Winter Park, Florida 32790
Phone: 407.975.3325 | Fax: 407.975.3327
We welcome your order, want lists, comments, material for sale or consignment and suggestions.
Please send email to: office@sedwickcoins.com
