The Toronto Coin Expo Spring 2015 comes to iCollector.com for live bidding on May 28th and 29th, 2015. Geoffrey Bell auctions has carefully prepared a fantastic offering of over 1300 lots spread between two days of auctioneering. Registrations are being accepted anytime through the online catalog, and absentee bids are currently being accepted. Live bidding is available on any Mac and PC, and full mobile bidding will be available on any smartphone or tablet.
Geoffrey Bell Auctions will be presenting the auction at Canada’s most popular coin show with an exceptional array of Canadian Coins and Banknotes, as well as carefully collected tokens, medals, and banknotes. An exciting offering is the Geoffrey Bell collection of pre- Confederation tokens and coins; which is the largest token collection sold in the last 25 years. There is also the first installment of countermark tokens from The Richard Cooper Collection. Several consignors have helped make this one of the best auctions of the year.
At Lot 266 is the highlight of the collection. An excessively rare Peter McAuslane token of St. John’s, Newfoundland is up for auction. McAuslane was a merchant in St. John’s and Prince Edward Island. He was a blacksmith by trade and a dry goods merchant circa 1844. It is believed 100 tokens were originally ordered and likely most were destroyed by the great fire of 1846. The specimen up for auction sold for $43000 in Chicago in 2013 and was part of the famous John J Ford, Jr. Collection. A full description and photographs are available for viewing in the online catalog on iCollector.com. The opening bid is currently set at $43,000 Canadian.
The very interesting Holey Dollar from PEI is up for grabs at Lot 247. This coin belonged to the PEI collector Wendell Rogers who died in 1993. It was impossible to classify among the different groups of known countermarks because a number of punch marks and gouges have been applied over the top of the original countermark of nine or ten rays. One ray can be seen to have escaped the vandal’s punch. This lot is part of the Geoffrey Bell Collection and is up for auction to the highest bidder. Bidding online opens at $1250 Canadian and is available for online inspection.
In addition, this auction has the largest collection of counter-stamped coins ever assembled in Canada. The collection was put together by a noted American collector and later purchased by a Montreal based collector. Counter-stamped coins were yesterday’s business cards and were handed out to customers for advertising and marketing purposes. Merchants in the 1880’s would often find obsolete tokens and counter stamp their name on them. These coins are very popular with collectors are a significant part of this auction.
Live bidding commences at 6PM Eastern Time on both May 28th and 29th, 2015. iCollector.com bidders are invited to join the sale using their bidder accounts. New bidders are invited to join through a secure interface using an email address, or logins with Facebook or Google plus. The auction catalog can be found simply by visiting the iCollector.com homepage and looking for the Toronto Coin Expo or Geoffrey Bell Auctions.