Gold coins lose none of their shine as “Brasher” doubloon sells for a record price

The New York-style Brasher gold coin just set a new record auction sale price of $9.4. Chris Carter reports

New York-style Brasher doubloon
New York-style Brasher doubloon
(Image credit: © Heritage Auctions)

The gold price may have lost some of its shine this year, but the same cannot be said for one gold coin in particular. Last month, a rare 1787 “New York-style Brasher” doubloon set a new record price for a gold coin when it sold for almost $9.4m with Texas-based Heritage Auctions. Another of the seven known to exist had held the record since December 2011 when it fetched $7.4m at auction, but the latest coin is said to be the finest of the lot. While the 1794 “Flowing Hair” silver dollar retains the overall record (it sold for $10m in 2013), the New York-style Brasher is nevertheless revered by collectors. It has even had a film-noir thriller named after it: The Brasher Doubloon from 1947, starring George Montgomery and Nancy Guild, and based on The High Window by Raymond Chandler.

Ephraim Brasher, after whom the doubloon is named, was a late 18th-century silversmith who had served in the Revolutionary War, and lived in New York at a time when the city was briefly the capital of the fledgling United States. George Washington was his next-door neighbour. As an expert in precious metal work, Brasher was later called on by the new US Mint to assay the purity and weight of the many foreign coins then in circulation, and which tended to be reserved for large purchases. (Coppers are what you would have used for trifling expenses. And if you did have trouble remembering what your British guineas where worth compared with your Spanish doblons (from where we get the name “doubloon”), the Bank of North America printed a guide setting out the various values in 1789.) On occasion, these bullion coins would need to be topped up with a little more silver or gold if they had been debased on their journeys around the world. When Brasher was happy, he stamped his initials “EB” on the coins, which became a hallmark of quality.

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Chris Carter
Wealth Editor, MoneyWeek

Chris Carter spent three glorious years reading English literature on the beautiful Welsh coast at Aberystwyth University. Graduating in 2005, he left for the University of York to specialise in Renaissance literature for his MA, before returning to his native Twickenham, in southwest London. He joined a Richmond-based recruitment company, where he worked with several clients, including the Queen’s bank, Coutts, as well as the super luxury, Dorchester-owned Coworth Park country house hotel, near Ascot in Berkshire.

Then, in 2011, Chris joined MoneyWeek. Initially working as part of the website production team, Chris soon rose to the lofty heights of wealth editor, overseeing MoneyWeek’s Spending It lifestyle section. Chris travels the globe in pursuit of his work, soaking up the local culture and sampling the very finest in cuisine, hotels and resorts for the magazine’s discerning readership. He also enjoys writing his fortnightly page on collectables, delving into the fascinating world of auctions and art, classic cars, coins, watches, wine and whisky investing.

You can follow Chris on Instagram.