Venezuela 1889 2 bolivares
This specimen was lot 2406 in Stack's Bowers NYINC sale (New York, January 2022), where it sold for $552. The catalog description[1] noted, "VENEZUELA. 2 Bolivares, 1889. Caracas Mint. PCGS Genuine--Cleaned, EF Details. A VERY RARE date from an incredibly low mintage of only 50,000 pieces. While seen infrequently, most survivors show extensive circulation, qualifying them for Very Fine or lesser grades. In contrast, the highpoint detail is quite sharp on this example, presenting full segmentation through Bolivar's hair and within the reverse shield. The surfaces, a light gray in color, display evidence of past cleaning with some intermittent micro-roughness. Despite the past handling, a coin that easily qualifies as the second best example (the best being a NGC-graded AU-58 that brought $47,000 in 2014) within archived auctions results that date back nearly two decades. From the Centuria Collection." This type was struck at various mints (a Caracas product is shown here) 1879, 1886-89, 1894, 1900-05, 1911-13, 1919, 1922-30, 1935-36.
Recorded mintage: 50,000, the key date.
Specification: 10 g, 0.835 fine silver, 27 mm diameter.
Catalog reference: KM-Y23; Stohr-48.
- Michael, Thomas, and Tracy L. Schmidt, Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1801-1900, 9th ed., Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2019.
- Stohr, Tomas, El Circulante en la Capitania General de Venezuela, Caracas, Banco Central de Venezuela, 1998.
- [1]Orsini, Matt, Kyle Ponterio and Jeremy Bostwick, The 2022 NYINC Sale: World and Ancient Coins, featuring the Mark and Lottie Salton Collection and the Pat Johnson Collection, Costa Mesa, CA: Stack's Bowers LLC, 2021.
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