Downie's Sale #300 - The Big One

The next Downie auction is something of an event - it's their 300th consecutive sale, and marks 45 years of the company being in business. Now I've got a pretty much complete run of Downie catalogues, and although the early ones weren't nearly on the scale as they have been in recent years, that's still a fair achievement in anyone's book.

If I were to pick a highlight of the sale, I'd have to say that it's the very solid run of Australian sovereigns - very nearly a complete set! Now there are a number of other key items listed, a strong Holey Dollar being one of them, but it's the range of sovereigns on offer, particularly the inclusion of a few key dates in reasonable grade, that sets this sale apart. A number of the coins haven't been seen for quite a few years, and although their presentation in this catalogue is rather innocuous (it always kills me when there's a coin that's maybe one of a dozen known and it gets a thumbnail image, a 1-line description and the estimate!), make no mistake of their rarity.

There's also a rather long run of Aussie tokens, some intriguing counterstamped colonial coins (silver Spanish colonial reales etc), which either haven't been seen in a long while or haven't been seen before. These items have the potential to tell a real story, as soon as we know who the hell put them out!

There are some rather attractive Commonwealth coins listed (they always seem to get good prices for their high-grade copper coins), as well as some rare predecimal notes in good grade.

There were a few pretty darn exciting bargains picked up at their last sale (think of a few honest 1930 pennies for less than $17,000), so it'll be interesting to see how this one pans out. I reckon there might be a few more bidders ready with pencils sharpened just in case some of the heavy weight items turn up unreserved.