PROCEEDS FROM THE WORLD-RENOWNED ASSEMBLAGE WILL BENEFIT DALLAS NONPROFITS
By Steve Lansdale and Robert Wilonsky
When Heritage Auctions announced last summer that it had been selected to offer one of the most revered and valuable rare-coin collections in numismatics history, The Harry W. Bass Jr. Core Collection, Heritage estimated the assemblage to be worth more than $60 million. But when the hammer fell on August 10, at the end of the fourth and final installment of the collection offered through Heritage over the past year, the historic assemblage of some of the rarest U.S. gold coins and die patterns soared past all expectations, bringing a combined total of $83.66 million. Now, proceeds from the collection’s sale will go to the dozens of Dallas-based nonprofits supported by the Harry W. Bass Jr. Foundation, with an emphasis on early childhood education and literacy in Dallas.
“The coin world has long known the value of Harry W. Bass Jr.’s breathtaking collection, and we were honored to have been chosen to bring it to auction for the first time,” says Todd Imhof, Executive Vice President at Dallas-based Heritage Auctions. “We’re grateful not only to the Harry W. Bass Jr. Foundation for selecting Heritage but to our client-collectors who recognized the significance of the collection and, in the process, helped raise more than $83 million to benefit nonprofits in Heritage’s backyard. We will be forever proud of our association with this historic collection and the impact it will have long after the final hammer fell.”
The collection, which the late Dallas oilman and philanthropist Harry W. Bass Jr. began assembling in the 1960s, has been on display at the American Numismatic Association’s Edward C. Rochette Money Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado, since October 2000. In 2022, the foundation’s trustees voted to sell the collection, which contains some 450 U.S. gold coins dating to the late 1700s, to increase its annual giving – from $2 million to at least $5 million each year.
“We’ve had to say no to so many deserving groups, and with the sale of this collection, we can now expand our funding and reach a lot more people,”says F. David Calhoun, executive director of the Harry W. Bass Jr. Foundation. “The pandemic has exposed how much need there is. It has been a very trying and challenging time for the nonprofit sector, especially in education, and it has magnified many times the needs of the underserved populations of Dallas.”
In April 2022, the foundation announced it would be removing its assemblage, which includes the only complete $3 gold coin collection, from the ANA museum and deaccessioning it to increase its philanthropic efforts in Dallas. The board of trustees hired Professional Coin Grading Service co-founder and numismatics expert John Dannreuther to manage the collection’s sale, including selecting an auction house and third-party graders. Heritage Auctions, founded in 1976 by Steve Ivy and Jim Halperin, was among several internationally renowned auction houses vying for the collection.
“All the funds raised from the sale of the Harry W. Bass Jr. Core Coin Collection will be used to support the community charities in which we are involved,” says Doris Bass, president and trustee of the Harry W. Bass Jr. Foundation and Harry’s widow. “For that reason alone, we knew we had to get it right when we selected an auction house.”
All of the coins in the Bass Collection had been unavailable for decades, and many trace their lineage to the heralded auction of Louis E. Eliasberg Sr.’s gold coin collection in 1982. Some of the collection’s top-performing lots included an 1870-S Three Dollar Gold, SP50 that sold for a record $5.52 million, an 1821 Capped Head Left Five, PR65 Cameo that realized $4.62 million and an 1829 Capped Head Left half eagle, PR66+ that sold for a record $2.88 million. The 1870-S $3, which drew 76 bids during Heritage’s January 5 installment of the Bass Collection, crushed the previous world record of $687,500 and is among the rarest and most enigmatic coins in the U.S. federal series.
Other standouts were a 1907 Ultra High Relief double eagle, PR69 and an 1829 Capped Head Left half eagle, PR66+ Cameo that sold for a combined $8.16 million during Heritage’s final installment of the Bass Collection. The 1907 Ultra High Relief double eagle, which last crossed the auction block in 1982, drew the event’s top result when it sold for $4.32 million after 73 bids. Once held in the private collection of Washington, D.C., collector John H. Clapp until his death in 1940, it was sold along with the rest of Clapp’s collection to Eliasberg in 1942 for more than $100,000 in what was, at the time, one of the largest recorded numismatic transactions. The 1829 Capped Head Left half eagle generated a similar bidding frenzy, drawing 66 bids before it ended at $3.84 million, far exceeding the previous record of $352,000 that was set when Bass purchased the coin in 1987.
“These coins were very special to Harry, and I hope the buyers appreciate them as much as he did,” Calhoun says. “They’re not just commodities, as every coin was special to Harry, as evidenced by the extraordinary collection of U.S. gold rarities he assembled. And, of course, the more money raised from the auctions of these coins, the better because that means we can help more people.”
Since the 1990s, the Harry W. Bass Jr. Foundation has supported qualified 501(c)(3) organizations throughout Dallas, primarily focusing on youth and education. Among its more than four dozen recipients, the foundation counts Frazier Revitalization in South Dallas, Head Start of Greater Dallas, Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas, the Momentous Institute, Bachman Lake Together in Northwest Dallas and Readers 2 Leaders in West Dallas. But the foundation also helps feed the hungry through such nonprofits as Crossroads Community Services (which provides nutritional assistance for at-risk children in Dallas County), and it supports Austin Street Center’s work with Dallas’ unsheltered.
A complete list of the foundation’s grant recipients can be found here.
STEVE LANSDALE is a staff writer at Intelligent Collector.
ROBERT WILONSKY is a staff writer at Intelligent Collector.