Descendants who kept their ancestors’ will to not sell the coins they had saved their entire lives for 100 years ended up receiving about 20 billion won.
According to CNN and Reuters on the 18th (local time), the first set of 20,000 coin collections of the Danish collector Lars Emil Brun, who died in 1923, was put up for auction in Copenhagen for four days starting on the 14th. After eight hours of bidding, 286 coins were sold for a total of 14.82 million euros (about 22.1 billion won).
The coins sold at auction include gold and silver coins from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden from the late 15th century. The oldest gold coin from the Scandinavian Peninsula was sold for 1.2 million euros (about 1.8 billion won).
The National Museum of Denmark, which holds the right of first refusal, also purchased seven rare coins from Brun’s collection ahead of the auction.
Brun was born in 1852 to a poor family. He began to take an interest in coin collecting when he inherited coins from his deceased uncle at the age of seven. He later amassed a huge fortune through his butter business and became passionate about coin collecting. In 1885, he became a founding member of the Danish Numismatic Society.
In an interview with a Danish magazine before his death, he said, “When I feel angry or anxious, I look at a coin and study the unsolved problem it presents over and over again, and that calms me down.”
After World War I, Brunn was concerned that the collection of the Royal Danish Museum could also be reduced to ashes. He thought that his collection could be replaced if this happened. He left a note in his will, saying, “In case the Danish national collection is destroyed, I should keep the coins and other things I have accumulated over 60 years as an emergency. If everything goes well in 100 years, I can sell them. It could be of help to future generations.”
According to her will, her descendants kept the coins for 100 years. It is said that they kept them so preciously that they did not even reveal their storage location to the outside world. “For 100 years, Brun’s coin collection was kept like ‘Sleeping Beauty’ without anyone accessing it,” said Michael Fornitz, a numismatist who oversaw the sale at auction house Stack’s Bowers.
Several more auctions are needed to sell all of Brun’s collection. The auction house said, “If all of Brun’s collection is sold, it will be the most expensive international coin collection of all time.” It also called it “the most valuable coin collection ever to come onto the market.” The collection is insured for $72.5 million.
Reporter Lee Hye-won, Donga.com [email protected]
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2024-09-20 23:30:28