Stack’s Bowers Presents Part II of the L. E. Bruun Collection

Stack’s Bowers Galleries is proud to announce the auction of Part II of the famed L. E. Bruun Collection, the world’s finest private collection of Scandinavian coinage, which has been insured for 500 million Danish kroner (about US$72.5 million). The auction will be held March 13-16, 2025, at the Hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich, Switzerland.

Part II follows quickly on the heels of the inaugural auction of the L. E. Bruun Collection: A Corpus of Scandinavian Monetary History. Held on September 14, 2024, in Copenhagen, Part I’s prices realized totaled €14,820,900 (approximately US$16.5 million), a record for a single numismatic auction in Scandinavia. Among the sale’s 286 Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish coins were many individual recording-setting prices, led by the unique in private hands Danish gold Noble of King Hans that sold for €1,200,000 (approximately US$1.33 million), more than three times the previous world record for a Scandinavian coin.

Denmark. Rose Noble, 1627. Copenhagen Mint. Christian IV. Friedberg-48, Bruun-5504. NGC MS-64.

Part II will offer a wider spectrum of Scandinavian numismatics, ranging from the Viking period through the 19th century, with a broader geographic reach as well. Augmenting the core Danish, Norwegian and Swedish items will be an extensive and much-anticipated offering of coins from the Danish duchies of Schleswig-Holstein, an area that was long under Danish rule but was lost to Germany after the Second Schleswig War in 1864.

Norway. 2 Ducats, No Date. Frederik III. Friedberg-5b. Bruun-6738. NGC MS-66*.

The second offering from the Bruun Collection will also present a greater diversity of price points, with an aggregate estimate in the range of €5 to €7 million. The approximately 700 items to be sold next March in Zurich will range in value from €1000 to many hundreds of thousands of Euros, whereas most items in Bruun Part I sold in excess of €10,000 each. “Coin collectors have been anticipating the sale of the Bruun Collection for over a century, and we had many crestfallen collectors with more modest budgets who could only watch from the sidelines during the first Bruun auction last month,” commented Michael Fornitz, Director of Stack’s Bowers Galleries Denmark. “With the higher lot count and lower average price point of Bruun II this coming spring, collectors of all means will be able to give chase to some of Bruun’s long-hidden numismatic treasures.”

Sweden/Germany. Erfurt. 4 Taler, 1633. Swedish Occupation. Davenport-LS272, Bruun-11899. NGC AU-58.

Beginning in the late 19th century, Lars Emil Bruun, better known as L. E. Bruun, amassed his fortune from the sale and export of countless millions of tins of world-renowned Danish butter. He invested some of that fortune in real estate on the outskirts of Copenhagen, which saw a marked rise in value as the population of that city tripled from 1890 through 1920. These business successes 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. When the final coin from the Bruun Collection has been auctioned, this cabinet will stand as the most valuable collection of international coins ever to have been sold.

Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp. 10 Ducats (Portugaloser), No Date. Johann Adolf. Friedberg-1502 var, Bruun-14145. NGC Unc Details.

Bruun, who passed away on November 21, 1923, left behind not only an impressive estate, but also an unusual destiny for his coin collection. Having seen the destruction wreaked by World War I, and keenly aware that the British bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807 had destroyed nearly the entirety of the Danish capital, L. E. Bruun formulated a unique and innovative will and testament: 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 ran out, and with the Royal Danish Coin and Medal Collection intact, L. E. Bruun’s fantastic collection of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish numismatics became destined for the auction block, with Stack’s Bowers Galleries awarded the contract for this world-renowned collection.

“Stack’s Bowers Galleries has been at the forefront of international numismatics for decades, having sold many of the greatest world coin collections, among them the 1982 Mortimer Hammel Collection, the famed Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr. Collection of Gold Coins of the World in 2005, the Wa She Wong Collection of Chinese coins, and most recently, ancient and world coins from the multigenerational Mark and Lottie Salton Collection,” remarked Brian Kendrella, President of Stack’s Bowers Galleries. “Just like our entry into the Hong Kong market with the Wa She Wong Collection in 2010, we have been waiting for the right moment to bring our numismatic brand into Europe, and the L. E. Bruun Collection provided us with the perfect opportunity.”

The L. E. Bruun Collection will be sold in a series of live auctions over the next three to five years, along with a series of online-only auctions commencing in early 2025 that will feature more modestly valued coins.