Auction Catalogue

29 September 2005

Starting at 10:00 AM

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The Important Collection of 18th Century Tokens formed by the late Dr David L Spence, of Pittsburgh (Part II)

Grand Connaught Rooms  61 - 65 Great Queen St  London  WC2B 5DA

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Lot

№ 1605

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29 September 2005

Hammer Price:
£170

Great Yarmouth, William Absolon, Halfpence, 1792 (2), both absolon edge, no countermark, 10.88g/6h (DH 51), with rosette countermark, 10.92g/6h (DH 52); Joseph, Daniel and John Boulter, Halfpence, 1796 (3), curved exergue, london edge, 11.47g/6h (DH 53a), straight exergue (2), boulter edge, 11.07g/6h (DH 54), edge plain, 11.23g/7h (DH 54a) [5]. DH 52 extremely fine, others very fine and better, DH 54a with a little original colour (£120-150)

Provenance:
Fawcett/Litman Collection, additionally:
DH 54 F.W. Lincoln Collection, Glendining Auction, 12-13 February 1936, lot 290 (part) [from Baldwin].

DH 52 only illustrated. William Absolon (1751-1815), china and glass manufacturer and dealer, fl. 1784-1815, at 25 Market row from 1790 (Howell,
English Ceramic Circle Transactions, vol.10, 1980). Daniel Boulter (1740-1802), son of a Quaker butcher at Worsted, was apprenticed to his cousin, Joseph Sparshall, a grocer of Great Yarmouth; after failing to find work in London he returned to Yarmouth and married Margaret Sutton of Melton Constable in 1764. Boulter became a museum proprietor in the Market place in Great Yarmouth, opening to the public a show of items of 'natural and artificial curiosities' in 1778. These included paintings, prints, books, coins and medals and, most notably, items brought back from the South Sea islands by Capt Cook; a catalogue of the contents, entitled Museum Boulterianum, was published in 1793. In 1794 he disposed of his museum to his nephew John; Daniel, his brother Joseph and the nephew commissioned the token. During Daniel’s last years he lived in a house in Howard street purchased in 1797 from Capt Samuel Barker, selling part of his coin collection by auction in London on 13 April 1799; the balance was auctioned post mortem in March 1808 (Brooke, CTCJ November 1997, pp.34-6)