NGC Certification # 8223293-049
1616 ( Cross ) Danish Mark silver coin featuring a portrait of King Christian IV of Denmark. With a special pedigree from the L.E. Bruun Collection.
Composition: Silver Fineness: 0.5930 Weight: 8.6610g ASW: 0.1651oz |
Design |
Reverse: Value above oval shield on long cross |
The L.E. Bruun collection, painstakingly assembled by this prosperous Danish butter merchant beginning as a boy in the 1850s and over the decades that followed, has remained essentially intact, unlike those of his contemporaries, which have long since been dispersed. Thanks in part to a unique and highly peculiar testament of his will, the L. E. Bruun Collection has been safeguarded for a century as a reserve for the Royal Danish Coin and Medal Collection. It first found refuge within the walls of Frederiksborg Castle, formerly a royal residence, before finding its way to the Danmarks Nationalbank (Danish Central Bank) in Copenhagen.
Since 2011, nearly 20,000 meticulously arranged items, housed within four grand custom-made cabinets (as they were at Mr. Bruun’s demise in 1923), have remained securely stored in a secret location, insured for 500,000,000 Danish kroner (approximately USD 72,550,000). The world awaits as the L. E. Bruun Collection, poised for its transformation from a Danish national treasure into an international marvel, emerges from its century-long slumber and takes its place as the most valuable collection of world coins and medals ever to cross the auction block.
Deeply moved by the devastation he witnessed during World War I and fearing a new war or bombing of Copenhagen, L. E. Bruun left exacting instructions in his will for his collection: “For a period of 100 years after my death, the collection shall serve as a reserve for the Royal Coin and Medal Collection in Copenhagen in the sense that if it should be substantially destroyed by fire or lost by theft or other such event, my collection shall be offered to the State as a gift.” However, should the next century pass with the national collection intact, “it shall be sold at public auction and the proceeds shall accrue to the persons who are my direct descendants.”
