(ca. 1784) New York. Ephraim Brasher (EB) Regulated Brazil 1754-B 6400 Reis. AU-53 (PCGS).
181.0 grains. Neatly plugged at center from back to front, with a substantial gold pin pushed through a drilled hole and peened flat to the left at central reverse. An EB in oval punch of Ephraim Brasher (the identical punch used on the famous Brasher doubloons) was carefully applied at the central obverse. The edges have been carefully clipped circumferentially to the tops of the legends and a false vertically reeded edge device has been applied to cover the clipping. When Brasher regulated this coin (to the 1784 Bank of New York standard), it would have weighed 216 grains. In its later life as a useful coin, probably while in or bound for the West Indies, more weight was taken off to meet lower island standards and provide a profit for the clipper. The surfaces are richly toned in bold magenta and coppery tones around the devices and peripheries, an eye-catching contrast to the dominant rich yellow gold. Some sparse hairlines are seen, but no serious marks. This is a beautiful example. For an entire generation of scholars, this was the coin that introduced them to the phenomenon of regulated gold coins. After acquiring this piece in a 1913 B. Max Mehl sale, Waldo Newcomer chose it - from one of the most impressive and enormous cabinets in the country - to be among just five pieces he loaned for display at the 1914 ANS Exhibition. The others were also of the highest importance: a silver Continental dollar, a Getz half dollar in copper, a silver Myddelton token, and a Standish Barry threepence. The next year, when the 1742-dated Brasher Lima-style doubloon was discovered by Newcomer, this coin became a reference touchstone. When Wayte Raymond, William Woodin, and Edgar Adams (collectively, the American Numismatic Society's Committee on United States Coins) was asked to rule on the new Lima-style doubloon's authenticity, they cited this exact coin. "The counterstamp E B was added after the piece had been struck," they wrote in the American Journal of Numismatics, "and seems to be exactly like the stamps of this assayer which have been examined on the various Brasher doubloons and other gold coins, usually of Spanish or Portuguese origin, which have appeared from time to time." They noted on the following page "Mr. Newcomer has a piece in his collection, of the same denomination, but dated 1754, also bearing the E B counterstamp on an inserted plug of gold." That was this coin. In Walter Breen's seminal ANS paper "Brasher and Bailey: New York Coiners," published in 1958 at the peak of his numismatic powers, he noted: "[The] assays of foreign gold coins immediately suggest an explanation for the fairly often reported gold coins with the countermark of EB in oval, often on center plug … a Brazilian half dobra of 1754 (Bahia mint), from the Newcomer collection, appeared on pl. 13 of the catalogue of the Society's Exhibition of U.S. and Colonial Coins, January 1914." After Newcomer sold his colonials more or less intact to B. Max Mehl in 1931, this piece disappeared from sight. When it reemerged in 2005, the world was ready for it. Regulated gold coins had been put on the map by Ralph Gordon's West Indian Countermarked Gold Coins in 1987, and a new generation of scholars had begun to connect the dots of the relevance and importance of the gold coins marked by identified American goldsmiths. When this piece sold in January 2005, the market for these still-obscure pieces was maturing (this coin brought just $19,550 back then, and even that was a lot at the time). The Eliasberg collection of world gold coins broke the market open just a few months later, in April 2005, as regulated gold coins soared to record heights: $43,700 for a Brasher-regulated guinea, for instance. Over the next several years, American colonial specialists began to appreciate the unique role these pieces played in the urban import-export economy of post-colonial America, and between this coin's appearance in January 2005 and Syd's auction acquisition of it in January 2008, its value had more than doubled. This coin, struck in Brazil, made its way to New York in the era of the American Revolution. It crossed Ephraim Brasher's workbench while the exact punch he used on the 1787 Brasher doubloons was in his tool chest. And then it continued its journal into the Atlantic economy, circulating and eventually ending up in the West Indies. Its weight went up and down over that time: worn, plugged, clipped, and clipped again, as it fit into various local and regional economies. Its journey as a collectible has been as interesting as its travels as a useful object, and today it is a landmark property.
PCGS# 495.
From the Sydney F. Martin Collection. Earlier from B. Max Mehl's sale of the H.O. Granberg Collection, July 1913, lot 1137; Waldo Newcomer Collection; B. Max Mehl, 1931; unknown intermediaries; Heritage's sale of the Gold Rush Collection, January 2005, lot 30014; our (Stack's) Americana sale, January 2008, lot 7002.

Estimate: $120000