After some much appreciated
help from
carthago I have amended the
provenance of the coin, to reflect an even longer, more exciting
history.
The 1933
Haeberlin catalogue actually has a special note about this coin saying it was the only one of its
type from the
Lawrence Collection of New York.
I am pretty sure this was the
collection of Richard Hoe
Lawrence (1858-1936) and likely goes further back to
his collector father Cyrus Jay
Lawrence (1832-1908) - pictured below in 1876. Cyrus was a stockbroker,
numismatist and prolific art collector; interestingly the grandson of Richard
Marsh Hoe - the inventor of the rotary printing press! The Cyrus J.
Lawrence & Sons law firm
still exists in
New York today.
His vast
collection of
fine art was sold posthumously on January 21-22, 1910 by American Art Association in a
catalogue, "ART TREASURES COLLECTED BY THE WELL KNOWN CONNOISSEUR THE LATE CYRUS J.
LAWRENCE, ESQ.,
NEW YORK".
His son Richard was also a
numismatist as well as a pioneer in photography. With Jacob Riis, he published an incredible
collection of early photographs of
New York slum tenements called "How the Other Half Lives" in 1890, look them up, they're really amazing.
Page on the
Lawrence family:
https://sites.google.com/site/numismaticmallcom/encyclopedic-dictionary-of-numismatic-biographies/lawrence-richard-hoeGreat to be able to trace this back even further than
Haeberlin.
