Heritage World Coin Auctions
NYINC Signature Sale 3037 Sess. 1 4 January 2015
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Ecuador
Republic gold 8 Escudos 1840-MV XF Details (Surface Hairlines) NGC, Quito mint, KM23.1, Fr-3. A still wholesome specimen of this rare type, with the handling evidence indicated on the insert not too detracting while retaining good details of the design. While currently not as popular as the later various types issued between 1844 and 1856 with the Bolivar bust, the Liberty Head Ecuador 8 Escudos issued in 1838-1843 are of comparable rarity (except for the very rare 1844-1845 issues) and arguably of a superior design. Witness the description of this type by Hernan Melville's character Captain Ahab in Moby Dick: "Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the sun and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun's disks and stars, ecliptics, horns of plenty, and rich banners waving, are in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold seems almost to derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, by passing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic. It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra". A most presentable example of this famous and romantic issue.
Estimate: 4000-6000 USD
Republic gold 8 Escudos 1840-MV XF Details (Surface Hairlines) NGC, Quito mint, KM23.1, Fr-3. A still wholesome specimen of this rare type, with the handling evidence indicated on the insert not too detracting while retaining good details of the design. While currently not as popular as the later various types issued between 1844 and 1856 with the Bolivar bust, the Liberty Head Ecuador 8 Escudos issued in 1838-1843 are of comparable rarity (except for the very rare 1844-1845 issues) and arguably of a superior design. Witness the description of this type by Hernan Melville's character Captain Ahab in Moby Dick: "Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the sun and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun's disks and stars, ecliptics, horns of plenty, and rich banners waving, are in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold seems almost to derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, by passing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic. It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra". A most presentable example of this famous and romantic issue.
Estimate: 4000-6000 USD