Rare coin sells for $60,000 at Mowbray Collectables’ auction

The rare Canadian/New Zealand coin "mistake" sold at auction for $60,000.

A coin mistakenly struck with both a Canadian side and a New Zealand side exceeded all estimates when selling for $60,000 at auction in Wellington last week.

Auctioneer David Galt from Mowbray Collectables in Ōtaki said the sale price was seven times its pre-auction estimate and a record for a Kiwi coin sold in New Zealand.

It is one of only 11 remaining in the world. It was the most valuable coin Mowbray’s had ever sold.

At the same auction event a unique and bizarre New Zealand halfpenny error coin with wording in Latin instead of English fetched twice its pre-auction estimate and sold for $19,000.

The world’s highest graded Hongkong and Shanghai Bank $10 banknote from 1920 sold at auction for $18,000.

Galt, who is also president of the New Zealand Royal Numismatic Society, said the international coin auction attracted strong overseas interest with online bidding increasing steadily over recent years, especially since Covid.

“The great thing is our top three sale items will all stay in New Zealand,” he says.

The coin auction held Friday last week was a record for Mowbray’s. Combined with a stamp auction the very next day. the auction topped the $1 million $1,000,000 mark.

“We saw sales of over $1 million across coins and stamps this weekend,” he said.

“The coin sale was a record for us, with the highest price ever paid for a New Zealand coin in a Mowbray sale, at $60,000, and 800 stamp lots attracted healthy interest. Online activity increased again.”

A collection of over 2000 of New Zealand’s earliest Queen Victoria stamps, known as full face queens, sold at $22,800, with well over the pre-auction estimate.

Another top lot was an 1831 missionary letter from Samuel Marsden’s Church Missionary Society, the earliest incoming letter recorded to New Zealand in private ownership. It sold at $4200, more than three times the pre-auction estimate.

A soldier’s letter of 1865, sent at a discounted soldier’s postage rate of just one penny, sold at an amazing $8400, two and half times its estimate.

The letters are rare, partly because most soldiers were illiterate. It was sent by Corporal John Thomas of the 14th Regiment.

- Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ on Air.