The Norweb Collection - An American Legacy

The sixpence she purchased had a distinguished pedigree before Elder acquired it, as it had come from Philip, Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, whose collection had been sold in 1928 by the German firm of Leo Hamburger. Elder sold it to Mrs. Norweb for $400. She graded it Very Good in 1937, but revised her grading of the coin upwards to Fine-If in 1982, which reflected its condition using the numerical grades first popularized by Dr. William Sheldon.

Elder's pricing was fair for the time. Today, we recognize the 1652 Willow Tree sixpence as Rarity-6, meaning fewer than 25 specimens are thought to survive from the original unknown, but small, mintage. To put Mrs. Norweb's cost into contemporary terms, consider that the EF example in the Garrett Collection sold for $46,000 in 1980, the peak of the last cycle in the colonial coin market; or that the example from John L. Roper's collection, which was Fine, but cracked, sold for $9,900 three years later.

In the Norweb inventory books this acquisition was given number 23. The Norweb inventory ledgers were started sometime after 1937, and coins were recorded as they came to hand when the Norwebs began inventorying them. Coin number 1, for example, was bought before 1912 by Mrs. Norweb's father Albert, while coin number 2 was purchased in 1937 by Mrs. Norweb herself.

The 1652 Willow Tree sixpence was loaned to the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. in 1960. In December 1982 it was donated to the National Collection, where it may be seen as part of our nation's numismatic heritage.

No further acquisitions were recorded in the inventory ledgers for the next eight months, from October 1934 until June 1935. Then, on June 29, Mrs. Norweb bought a 1722 Wood's Hibernia halfpenny, second type with the harp on the right, from Milfred H. Bolender's sale of the A.M. Smith Collection. Graded as Good at the time, she paid $2.75 for the piece. M.H. Bolender later, in 1950, wrote the standard catalogue of Bust type silver dollars dated from 1795-1803. While this purchase was not particularly significant in itself, it is important for the history of the Norweb Collection as it represents the first recorded auction purchase made by Mrs. Norweb herself, as well as the first auction purchase adding to the collection since 1912.

The grade of Good applied to this halfpenny was taken from Bolender's catalogue description of it. In the inventory listings of their coins, the Norwebs noted the grades of their coins as they appeared on dealers' invoices or in auction catalogues. For the most part, the Norwebs did not record numerical grades in the ledgers, even for purchases made much later on, when numerical grading had become the norm in the coin industry. In their card files, which recapitulated much of the information contained in the inventory ledgers, the Norwebs used a different grading system.

Mrs. Norweb's father Albert Holden had devised a numerical grading system of his own, in which adjectival grades were assigned a corresponding number. In his system, which was de-scribed in detail earlier, the number 1 was assigned to Proof condition coins regardless of their actual grade; the number 2 was given to Uncirculated coins, 3 to About Uncirculated ones, and so forth. The Norwebs formulated a new version of Albert Holden's numerical system for their personal card files.

In the Norwebs' system, the number 1 was assigned to Proof coins, regardless of actual grade; the number 2 was given to Uncirculated coins; and the number 3 was assigned to all other coins grading from About Uncirculated down through Poor condition. hi other words, the Norweb system kept Albert Holden's grading for top condition coins, but compressed all other grades into one large, catchall grade. Grading refinements which are today indicated by intermediate grades, as MS-64 and MS-63, or AU-55, were accounted for in the Norweb's system by adding descriptive comments. For example, a coin graded by them as 2, meaning an Uncirculated coin, could be further described in their card files as having very few bag marks, or a strong strike, and so on.

The Norweb grading system tells us two things about their "philosophy" of collecting coins. In the first place, they were very "strict" in grading their coins. To the Norwebs, a coin was either Uncirculated, Proof, or used. They recognized, of course, that some Uncirculated coins could look nicer than others, but their grading system was not designed to be as "scientifically" precise as the numerical system the coin hobby uses today. Their system was closer to the style still utilized by European collectors and professionals. The Norwebs considered grading to be an art rather than a science, and they would have had little sympathy for today's so-called "scientific grading", with its 11 different intermediate grades for an Uncirculated coin.