Prized 1804 US dollar sells for $3.3 million at auction

An 1804 US silver dollar sold for $3.3 million in one of a series of auctions that brought in a record total of more than $100 million for a renowned private coin collection, organizers said on Saturday.

The silver dollar, one of only eight of its kind, was snapped up at auction on Friday in Baltimore. It was one of more than 200 coins sold at the event.

The auction series, beginning in 2015, generated a total of nearly $107 million in sales, according to Stack’s Bowers Galleries, which conducted the auctions along with Sotheby’s.

The collection belonged to Dallas real estate developer Mack Pogue and his son Brent, who had collected coins since the 1970s. Coin dealers Kevin Lipton of California and John Albanese of New Jersey jointly bought the prized silver dollar, Donn Pearlman, a spokesman for the two men, said in an email.

“In coins, everybody’s heard of the 1804 dollar, it’s what I call the ultimate trophy coin,” said Q. David Bowers, co-founder of Stack’s Bowers Galleries.

The coin is emblazoned with the bust of a woman with flowing hair who represents liberty. Minted by the U.S. government, it was intended as a gift for foreign heads of state.

Brent Pogue began collecting coins in 1974 when he was a teenager and later brought his father into the enterprise.

The first coin the younger Pogue bought was at an auction of the trove that belonged to railroad scion T. Harrison Garrett. In a fitting finale of the Pogue Collection auctions, the last sale was held at the Garrett family’s former mansion at Johns Hopkins University, Bowers said by phone.

Mack and Brent Pogue’s collection consisted of more than 650 pieces. The father and son sold them because “the thrill of the chase” of being collectors had passed and they wanted to move on, Bowers said.

Even before Friday’s sale, the Pogue auctions had already surpassed the value of what had been the record-setting sale of the collection amassed by late dealer and collector John J. Ford.