Featuring Nearly 300 Coins Worth More Than $10 Million
Stack’s Bowers Galleries proudly announces that Part I of the L. E. Bruun Collection, the world’s finest private collection of Scandinavian coinage, will be held September 14, 2024 at Odd Fellow Palace in Copenhagen, Denmark. Nearly 300 gold and silver rarities from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden will be featured in this debut offering, issues which stretch from the late 15th century to within a few years of Bruun’s death in the early 20th century.
Beginning in the late 19th century, Lars Emil Bruun amassed his fortune from the sale and export of countless millions of tins of world-renowned Danish butter. This success and profitable real estate investments allowed him to expand the modest coin collection he had begun as a boy in the 1850s into the world’s greatest private collection of the coins, medals and paper money of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
Bruun passed away on November 21, 1923, and his will contained a unique provision regarding his coin collection. Having seen the destruction wreaked by World War I, he designated that his collection of over 20,000 coins, medals, tokens, and notes would be held as a reserve for the Royal Danish Coin and Medal Collection for a period of 100 years after his death. If the Royal Collection was damaged or stolen during that century, the L. E. Bruun Collection would become a gift to the Danish state. But if the Royal Collection remained intact, the collection would be sold at auction, with the proceeds benefitting Bruun’s direct descendants. On November 21, 2023, that 100-year waiting period expired and this fantastic collection of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish numismatics became destined for the auction block. Stack’s Bowers Galleries will bring the collection to market through several public auctions over the coming years, beginning September 14, 2024 in Bruun’s native Copenhagen.
Select highlights from the L. E. Bruun Collection Part I will be exhibited at coin fairs around the globe in the months leading up to the auction. The entirety of PartI will be on exhibition in Stack’s Bowers Galleries’ California and New York City galleries, at the American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money in Chicago, Illinois, and in the firm’s Hong Kong gallery before going on display in Copenhagen immediately preceding the September 14 auction. Please visit www.StacksBowers.com/the-L-E-Bruun-Collection for additional information and to view a full online preview of the auction after June 1. For catalog requests or inquiries about the Bruun auctions, telephone +1 949.253.0916 or email info@StacksBowers.com.
For more information, read the entire press release here.
