Michael Hodder and Q. David Bowers
Included among the Brock-University of Pennsylvania coins were numerous foreign issues, many of which had been mounted or tooled, as was the common practice years ago. Ford called in an outside expert to evaluate these, added his total estimate to Ford's own valuation of the US. coins, and presented the final figure to the University. In the meantime, B. Max Mehl had also been called in to appraise the collection. Mehl's figure was higher than Ford's, and the collection went to B. Max Mehl.
Having lost the collection to Mehl, in December, 1952 New Netherlands sent John Ford to Fort Worth, in the hopes of buying pieces Mrs. Norweb was interested in acquiring. Ford spent a week with Mehl, and was shown Mehl's "back room" where a staff of young ladies was employed to open the thousands of letters Mehl received each week in response to his prolific advertisernents in the numismatic and popular press.
The 1953 ANA Convention was held in Dallas, Texas; Abe Kosoff held the official ANA sale that year. Mrs. Norweb traveled from Cleveland to attend. At the convention she ran into John Ford on the bourse floor. After some friendly discussion, she told Ford that New Netherlands would be given all the duplicate coins from her collection for sale through their auctions. She told Ford that many coins had been purchased over the years, before their inventory records were mostly completed, and that on several occassions pieces already in the collection, but whose presence there was not yet realized, had been duplicated by buying identical issues later. This applied to foreign as well as US. issues.
Mrs. Norweb's duplicate US. coins were fed into auction sales starting in early 1954. New Netherlands did not acquire any of the Norweb duplicate foreign coins, however. After the ANA Convention Mrs. Norweb traveled to New York City, and while there stopped in to see Charles Wormser at New Netherlands' offices. During their meeting she mentioned to Charles that she wanted to deaccession her foreign duplicates through New Netherlands. Charles replied that New Netherlands didn't handle foreign coins, and so that part of the Norweb duplicates was lost. Mrs. Norweb thereupon contacted B. Max Mehl, who handled the foreign material, including crowns and rare gold coins, through his mail bid sales.
During the ANA Convention of 1953 John Ford showed Mrs. Norweb a shoe box of coins he had bought from Mehl in December of the preceding year. At the time he bought them from Mehl, Ford recognized them as English coins of William I through Henry VII. Mehl later told Mrs. Norweb that they were used in Texas in the early 19th century, when small silver coins were scarce! Mrs. Norweb she recognized them for what they were and bought them, for about a dollar each. These were then combined with the English medieval coins her father Albert had bought before 1913, and became the nucleus for the outstanding collection subsequently sold in four parts for several million dollars by Spink & Son, Ltd. starting in 1985.
The King Farouk Sale
For the Norwebs, as well as for the fraternity of collectors and professionals in the United States coin field, the big event of early 1954 was the sale of the fabulous King Farouk Collection, scheduled for nine full days of auction from February 24 to March 6. King Farouk's collection included rarities too numerous to mention here. Suffice it to say that the catalogue was all of 349 pages long, including plates and index; three or more times the average United States auction catalogue of the time. It was being sold at the order of the revolutionary government of Egypt, then under Colonel Abdul Nasser, which had lately overthrown the playboy king. The sale had been given to Sotheby's, but apparently nobody on the staff of the London auction house had any experience in United States regular issue coins, not to mention the hundreds of pattern and off-metal coins Farouk had been persuaded to buy over the years. Accordingly, the job of cataloguing the US. coins was given to Fred Baldwin, who at least knew how to use the Standard Catalogue of United States Coins. Baldwin also obtained a copy of Adams' and Woodin's book on pattern coins. Fred Baldwin spent part of the ocean voyage from London to Alexandria, Egypt, studying his reference books.
The job of cataloguing Farouk's collection was not made any easier for poor "Uncle Fred" by the new government. The new leaders of Egypt were convinced that Farouk had been taken advantage of by the professionals in the hobby, and to some extent they were right. This translated itself into a suspicion of all dealers, made worse by the Egyptian colonels' suspicion of foreigners of all kinds. When Fred Baldwin catalogued Farouk's coins, he did so in an ornate, grand suite in Farouk's palace, but there were soldiers standing over his shoulder watching his every move, and they had bayonets fixed to their rifles. These were not the easiest conditions under which to catalogue such an important collection. Coupled with Fred Baldwin's lack of understanding of certain of the complexities of US. numismatics, and the fact that there were thousands of coins to catalogue and only a few weeks to complete the job, it is not surprising that the US. coins in the Farouk Sale were under-catalogued!
When the auction catalogues were finally printed and distributed, collectors of United States coins could hardly believe what they saw in the auction. The cataloguer had combined rare and common coins into large lots in many cases. Despite the importance of many of the pieces in Farouk's collection, the only comments of a research or numismatic sort were the occassional, laconic "rare" or "very rare". Counterfeits abounded throughout the collection, not only in the US. section.
The Farouk Sale catalogue divided the collection into large sections of gold and silver, copper, bronze, etc. coins; the collection was further divided into geographical groupings. United States gold coins were positioned near the beginning of the sale, and presented many surprises to collectors. Lot 185, for example, was an eye-opener. It contained 17 double eagles, all of the Saint-Gaudens' design, and was nearly a complete set from 1924 to the final year of the denomination. Lotted together were the rare 1930-S, 1931, 1931-D, and 1932! Grading was limited to an unhelpful "Mostly extremely fine" comment. The final coin in the lot was a 1933 double eagle, but this piece was withdrawn prior to the sale, at the request of the United States Secret Service, since ownership or sale of the 1933 double eagle was, at the time, considered to be technically illegal. Abe Kosoff bid 1,000 pounds sterling for the lot, which was finally hammered down to David Spink, of Spink & Son, London, for 2,800 Egyptian pounds.
Ambassador and Mrs Norweb sailed on the later ill-fated Andrea Doria, arriving in Alexandria, Egypt well in advance of the auction. Mrs. Norweb particularly wanted one coin, which was to be found in a lot of 149 pieces. This was the legendary 1913 Liberty head nickel, one of only five specimens known. It had been included in lot 1695, which was described as follows:
1695. Five cents nickel (116), dates 1866-1938-D, complete as detailed in the National Coin Albums, also added to the collection are 1913 Liberty head, extra fine and very rare, 1937-D three-legged nickel, very fine and very rare, and nickels from 1938-1948-D (31), all about uncirculated except very few, a choice collection, in two albums. (149)