Record-Breaking Colonial Coin

On November 18, a silver threepence struck in Boston in 1652 set a world record in a Stack’s Bowers Galleries auction. The Massachusetts coin sold for $2.52 million, surpassing the previous world record price of $646,250 for an American coin struck before the Revolutionary War by nearly $2 million. It also set a record for a non-gold U.S. coin struck before the U.S. Mint was founded. Weighing just 1.1g, its silver value is about $1 based on today’s market.

This piece was discovered in an old cabinet in Amsterdam around 2016 and identified in 2020. The coin is thought to have come from the Quincy family of Boston, a political dynasty that included Abigail Adams.

Stack’s Bowers Galleries Director of Numismatic Americana John Kraljevich, cataloger of the piece, noted after the sale that he was “very pleasantly shocked” at the price, which was more than three times in-house presale estimates. Stack’s Bowers Galleries’ auctioneer Ben Orooji called the 12-minute bidding battle “an exhilarating ride and a career highlight.”

A version of this article appears in the January 2025 issue of The Numismatist (money.org).