Lot 2234
Great Britain. Crown, 1707. S.3600; ESC-104; Dav-1341. Queen Anne, 1702-1714. Obverse; Laureate portrait of Anne facing left, by John Croker (1670-1741). ANNA DEI GRATIA. Reverse; Inverted die axis, crowned cruciform shields, plain in angles. Edge reads DECVS ET TVTAMEN ANNO REGNI SEPTIO in raised letters. Very attractively toned mint state with a deep blue and grey iridescence, coupled with much original mint bloom. Practically flawless, this piece is finer than the EDJ Van Roekel collection and Pellegrino specimen, and exhibits the same natural distinguishing weakness on the TIA of GRATIA. Extremely rare in this state of preservation. We note that a 1707 Crown produced at the Edinburgh mint in 1707 (described as 'good extremely fine') sold for £19,840 ($25,000) in a March 2019 Spink sale in London. NGC graded MS-63. Estimate Value $5,000 - 6,000
* This was one of the first Crowns minted after the Union of Scotland and England in 1707, and the shields on the reverse are now changed to the post-Union type. Although the hair detail evident on the Queen's portrait is usually weak and in low relief on the post-Union Crowns and Halfcrowns, this specimen is unusually well struck.
Queen Anne was the second daughter of James II, and through her mother, Anne, the grand-daughter of Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon. She was not well educated, and preferred sport and riding to reading and art. In 1683, when she was 18, hot on the heels of a court scandal, when she was reputedly seduced by one of the royal courtiers, Lord Mulgrave, Anne was married to Prince George, brother of the Danish king Christian V. He was harmless, well meaning and a good husband, but nationally George was not popular.
Anne took an interest in the foreign wars which raged throughout much of her comparatively brief reign. Marlborough's victory at Blenheim in 1704 extinguished the ambitions of the French in Germany, that of Ramillies in 1706 swept them out of the Spanish Netherlands. In 1708, the year after this coin was produced, Minorca was taken and held by the British. As well as ceding this territory, the Spaniards made a deal with Britain by selling the right to import large numbers of African slaves into the American colonies. The French surrendered their territorial rights on the fringes of their American possessions, and for the last years of Anne's reign peace prevailed.
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| Realized $9,600 |
