The John Quincy Adams Collection of Ancient Coins

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The Adams family’s collection of ancient coins was offered in 971 lots by Stack’s Galleries of New York in March 1971. Many of America’s Founding Fathers had a solid classical education and were deeply influenced by the heritage of Greece and Rome. Ancient Greece, specifically Athens, was, after all, the birthplace of the democratic form of government they were seeking to create in the United States. In the 18th century, it was common for educated young aristocrats making a “Grand Tour” of Europe to acquire a few ancient coins as souvenirs. 

Presidential Provenance

Thomas Jefferson, who read Greek and Latin, was given a collection of 150 Roman bronze coins by a Danish scholar, which he donated in 1806 to the American Philosophical Society (founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743). According to legend, Theodore Roosevelt carried an ancient Athenian coin in his pocket for good luck, though another source says it was a coin of Alexander the Great.

John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), our sixth president and son of second president John Adams, collected ancient coins. His son, Charles Francis Adams (1807-86), inherited about 265 coins and eventually expanded this collection to over 5,000 pieces. Many of these he picked up while frequenting London coin auctions when he served as ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1862 to 1868, where his diplomatic skill was instrumental in keeping Britain from intervening on the Confederate side in the American Civil War.

Adams Abroad

A Stack’s auction house cataloger, when preparing for a 1971 sale of the Adams collection, wrote:

“John Quincy Adams, at the age of eleven, accompanied his father John Adams to Europe in 1778. He studied in Paris during the years 1778 and 1779, then went to the University of Leiden in Holland, in 1780. When he was fourteen, in 1781, he accompanied the American Minister designate, Charles Dona, to Russia and then rejoined his father in Paris, where he served as ‘additional secretary’ to the American Commissioners negotiating the treaty of peace with Great Britain that brought the Revolutionary War to a conclusion. When John Adams was appointed first Minister to Great Britain his son chose to return to Boston and go to Harvard. When he [John Quincy Adams] was appointed in his turn as American Minister to Russia in 1809 he took his two-year-old son, Charles Francis Adams, with him to St. Petersburg…Charles Francis followed the family custom by taking his son Henry with him on his own diplomatic mission to London.”

John Quincy Adams’s travels abroad occurred during a marked upsurge in the attention being given to the history and artifacts of the ancient world. The excavations in Pompeii and Herculaneum, proceeding under the patronage of the King of Naples, ignited everyone’s imagination. The great collection of Greek and Roman antiques formed by Sir William Hamilton, British Minister to the Court of Naples, attracted a great deal of attention in scholarly and other circles. It must also be remembered that the normal education of those days included a very firm grounding in Greek and Latin languages and literature. Under the circumstances, it is easy to see how the young Adams’s interest in ancient coins came naturally. Clearly, this was passed on to the next generations.

Addicted to Coins

An important source for the story of the Adams family collection of ancient coins is Marc Friedlaender’s article, “Charles Francis Adams, Numismatist” published in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1974. Friedlaender, a professor of English and coeditor of the Adams papers, died in 1992. Describing Charles Francis Adams’s time in London, Friedlaender writes, 

“The one recreation in which he indulged himself there was attendance at the auction sales of coins and medals. As his son, Henry wrote, ‘He would disappear from the Legation day after day to attend coin sales at Sotheby’s.’”

Adams’s diary entries also reveal his addiction: “Again I stole away from my regular duties to be present at the day’s sale of coins,” and “I drew up my Dispatches earlier than usual in order to get away in season to attend the coin sale.” Adams clearly ascribed to that core tenet of wise collecting, learn before you buy. In a letter to his brother-in-law Edward Brooks in 1858, Adams wrote, “Numismatics are but a baby’s toy shop if not accompanied by the knowledge that makes them a science.”

Adams estimated that he spent over $2,500 on coins and medals during his six years in London. A dollar in 1868 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $22.23 today, meaning that Adams poured some $55,000 into his hobby.

Charles Francis Adams died in Boston on November 21, 1886, at the age of 79. The collection passed to his son, the historian Henry Adams (1838-1918), who took little interest in it and stored it in a bank vault in Washington. In 1913 he wrote to his brother, Brooks, “I care nothing for them…and can’t take them to the next world…shall I dump them in the street?”

Massachusetts Historical Society 

Wisely, in 1913, he instead donated the coins amassed by John Quincy and Charles Francis Adams to the Massachusetts Historical Society, where the collection proved to be something of a burden. Unable to properly conserve, display, or secure these pieces, the society eventually gained permission to sell them. The society’s president Thomas Boylston Adams (1910-97), another Adams descendant, wrote:

“The Society’s coins have been very little used by scholars in recent decades. Nor does the Society have facilities for showing them to the general public. In 1965 the danger of theft became so apparent that the collection was placed in the vaults of a Boston bank. What had previously been a great difficulty in showing the coins to occasional interested persons became almost an impossibility. The coins which had become of diminishing use for the purposes of history became of no use at all. The choice appeared to be to keep them in dead storage indefinitely or to expose them to the probable danger of theft. Fortunately a better solution was proposed. The Probate Court…granted permission to sell for the benefit of the Society duplicates and foreign coins without special interest to students of American history. With this end in view, the services of Stack’s were engaged for the disposal of such coins.”

Proceeds from this sale helped to fund editing and publication of the Adams papers. Some of these coins turn up occasionally in today’s auctions. Because a provenance to the Adams family collection significantly enhances the historic value of a coin, unscrupulous sellers may create false attributions (ancient coins are like puppies: the price may depend on the pedigree).

Five Auctions

The society’s coins were auctioned in five sales held in 1970-73 by Stack’s Galleries of New York. The third of these (March 5-6, 1971) was devoted to the ancient coins from the Adams collection. The 94-page catalog listed 971 lots (some lots contained multiple coins) and had 11 pages of plates. Unfortunately, not all the coins were pictured, and the blurry 1970s photography is not up to modern digital standards. A few lots were withdrawn before the sale, perhaps because they were judged by Stack’s to be 19th-century forgeries. Of all the lots, 58 were gold, the rest were silver and bronze, and 309 were ancient “Greek” (including some Phoenician, Parthian, and Carthaginian types), 320 were Roman Republican, 278 Roman imperial, and 3 Byzantine.

The highest price realized for a single coin was $1,200 (against a pre-sale estimate of $1,600) for Lot 126, a rare silver tetradrachm struck by the Carthaginians in Sicily around 350 B.C. This famous and popular type bears the head of Persephone surrounded by dolphins, with a horse head and palm tree on the reverse.

President John Quincy Adams and his son Charles Francis Adams typified the educated elite of 19th-century American society in their fascination with the ancient world. However, in furthering this interest via the accumulation of such a significant collection of ancient coins, they set themselves apart from their peers in the intelligentsia. Interestingly, they would have had considerably more difficulty assembling their collection today, as the very United States government that John Quincy Adams once led is now imposing considerable restrictions on importing ancient coins. To cite one example from the 1971 auction, Lot 381, a cast bronze aes grave of the Roman Republic, may no longer be legally imported into the United States (per a 2011 State Department “Memorandum of Understanding” with Italy). One wonders what President Adams would think about the criminalization of one of his favorite hobbies.

Lot Highlights

Some highlights of the Adams family collection as auctioned by Stacks in March 1971 included:

Lot 111, a superb silver tetradrachm of the Greek city of Selinus in Sicily c. 466-415 B.C., depicting Apollo with his bow standing in a chariot driven by his sister, Artemis. On the reverse, the local river god stands over an altar, with the city’s emblem, a parsley leaf in the field. This coin brought $650 (estimate $500).

Lot 122, “Superb, almost uncirculated” silver 16 litrae of Syracuse bearing the portrait of queen Philistis, wife of Hieron II (r. 275 – 215 B.C.). Estimated at $425, the coin sold for $550.

Lot 194, a very rare archaic silver tetradrachm of Athens dated to the 6th century B.C. brought $750 against an estimate of $550. Athens controlled the richest silver mine in the Mediterranean world, and coins bearing the helmeted head of the goddess Athena, with a standing owl on the reverse, became the standard currency of international trade for centuries.

Lot 318, a gold stater of Alexander the Great, (c. 336-323 B.C.) from the mint of Sidon in Lebanon brought $400 against an estimate of $350. Struck from gold seized from the Persian empire, a coin of this type would have represented a month’s pay for a mercenary. 

Lot 326, from the scarce first gold issue of the Roman Republic dated to 211 B.C., bearing the helmeted head of Mars on the obverse, and an eagle on the reverse, brought $825 against an estimate of $500. The coin is incorrectly described as “electrum”—it is actually pure gold. The denomination is described by weight as “three scruples”—it is now known as “60 asses.” On Harlan Berk’s list of the 100 greatest ancient coins, this type is ranked as No. 71. In recent auctions, coins of this type have sold for $8,000 to over $20,000.

Lot 381, an enormous cast bronze of the Roman Republic c. 225-217 B.C., described as “almost uncirculated,” brought $625 against an estimate of $500. On Harlan Berk’s list of the 100 greatest ancient coins, this type is ranked as No. 34.

Lots 553-562 are a nearly complete run of the famous Nine Muses denarii of the Roman magistrate Quintus Pomponius Musa, dated to 66 B.C. Unfortunately, none of these lovely coins were illustrated in the catalog. Only the very rare coin for Erato, Muse of erotic or lyric poetry, is missing. 

Lot 637, a silver portrait denarius of Julius Caesar, issued in January-February 44 B.C. shortly before his assassination, realized $260 against an estimate of $225. In recent auctions, coins of this type (Crawford 480/4) in similar grades have sold for $4,000-$6,000 and up. On Harlan Berk’s list of the 100 greatest ancient coins, this type is ranked as No. 14.

Lots 660-682 are a nearly complete run of the very popular “Legionary” denarii of Marc Antony, struck to pay his army in Greece during the civil war in 31 B.C. None of these are illustrated in the catalog. 

Lot 688, a denarius bearing portraits of Cleopatra and Marc Antony, probably struck at Antioch in Syria c. 34 B.C., brought $650 against an estimate of $500. Portrait coins of Cleopatra are enormously popular with collectors, and well-preserved specimens always bring high prices. On Harlan Berk’s list of the 100 greatest ancient coins, this type is ranked as No. 12.

A search on the CoinArchives Pro database found 46 examples of coins from this sale in subsequent auctions between 1997 and 2025. In a few cases, this included repeated sales of the same coin. 

Sources

Berk, Harlan J. 100 Greatest Ancient Coins. Third Edition. Pelham, AL: Whitman Publishing, 2023.

Clain-Stefanelli, Elvira. Numismatics: An Ancient Science. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office,  1965.

Federal Register. January 19, 2011 (Volume 76, Number 12) [Rules and Regulations] Pages 3,012-3,013.

Friedlaender, Marc. “Charles Francis Adams, Numismatist.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 86, 1974.

Stack’s. The Massachusetts Historical Society Collection of Foreign and Ancient Gold, Silver, and Copper Coins: Featuring the Collection of President John Quincy Adams and Descendants. New York, 1971.