Welcome to the sixth and final showcase auction offering of the Sydney F. Martin Collection. But do not despair fellow collectors: Syd was such a voracious collector in life that Stack’s Bowers Galleries will present dedicated Sydney F. Martin Collectors Choice Online auctions through at least the end of 2025!
It is hard to fathom that the researching and collecting force that was Syd has been gone for over three and a half years now. I still vividly recall sitting in my home office at the height of the pandemic on the first business day of 2021 – in the same chair where I sit now – fielding a call from Syd, who wanted his people to meet me and my people at Stack’s Bowers Galleries. At age 75, it seemed like wise estate planning. I knew that he had been sick for some time, and for years he had been successfully fighting the cancer that finally took him from both his traditional and numismatic families. But, as I hadn’t seen Syd for the better part of a year due to the pandemic, I had not comprehended the severity of his decline. On the morning of January 19, I was emailing back and forth with Syd to nail down a date for our conference call; in the evening I glanced at my emails while my children brushed their teeth at bedtime, only to see a flurry of shocking emails: Syd had passed on.
Syd had left some general instructions regarding his vast numismatic collections. But one thing was clear: though he was not in the least vain, Syd wanted his life’s avocation to be preserved in a legacy that extended beyond the four standard references on underappreciated colonial series that he had meticulously researched, authored, and published in the previous dozen years.
He wanted a series of catalogs—similar to the two dozen produced for the John J. Ford, Jr. Collection auctions presented by Stack’s and Stack’s Bowers Galleries from 2003 to 2014—to memorialize his collection in print and in the digital ether. Since August 2022, we have featured Syd’s major, frontline collections through six named catalog auctions and six named Collectors Choice Online auctions. In addition, countless of his “regular,” non-Colonial U.S. and World coins have been feathered into our usual roster of auctions. In the process, we will have sold nearly 6,000 lots for almost $20 million, with many thousand yet to be sold in the half dozen or so Collectors Choice Online auctions yet to come. Though many of these upcoming auctions will feature Syd’s numerous duplicates, there are certain areas of his collection that have not yet seen the light of day in a meaningful way. These include his vast 1932 Washington Collection (a few pieces of which are featured in this auction), his Irish Gunmoney, his French Colonial stampees and “black doggs,” his Danish West Indies coinage, his general U.S. tokens and medals, and more.
The 574 lots in this auction are, quite incredibly, almost all duplicates, and what fantastic duplicates Syd collected! If this were any other collection, it would be regarded as a world-class offering of colonial coins and medals. But this is Syd we are talking about. Who else could offer a duplicate 1787 Massachusetts Transposed Arrows cent, one of fewer than 20 known of this famous Guide Book variety? Who else could offer a duplicate bronze original Daniel Morgan at Cowpens Comitia Americana medal, one of only four in private hands? Syd bought this superb medal in our 2019 sale of the John Adams Collection, having forgotten that he had purchased one in Part XIV of the Ford Collection in 2006! Who else could offer a collection of Connecticut coppers featuring 313 different die marriages and have it be their second line collection? Syd loved the challenge of the Connecticut series, and though he pared down some of his other state copper duplicates in the late 2010s, he doubled down on the Connecticuts, forming this fantastic second collection that is more complete and of higher quality than most collectors’ primary collections!
I will remember my friendship and interactions with Syd fondly for as long as I live, and he will live forever in collectors’ consciousness through his publications and this series of catalogs of the Sydney F. Martin Collection. A colonial coin library missing Syd’s books and catalogs would be like one that does not include Sylvester S. Crosby’s still essential 1875 work Early Coins of America or a set of the 24 Ford Collection catalogs – that is to say, incomplete.
Let us all honor Syd by keeping our numismatic friendships alive and well, and by publishing, not withholding, numismatic information.
We will miss you Syd. The hobby is better for your life and efforts.
