The Most Valuable Collection of World Coins to Ever Come to Market

This week, Stack’s Bowers Galleries will auction 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$73 million). The auction will be held March 14-15, 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.

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.

Bruun, who passed away on November 21, 1923, left behind not only an impressive estate, but also an unusual destiny for his coin collection, one that has attracted international attention since the sale of his collection was announced early last year. 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.

Part II’s 550 lots, carrying estimates in the range of €5.5 to €7.5 million, represent a wide spectrum of Scandinavian numismatics, ranging from the Viking period through the 19th century, with a broad geographic reach as well. Augmenting the core Danish, Norwegian and Swedish items is 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.

“Collectors and researchers of Scandinavian coinage the world over, myself included, have been waiting entire lifetimes for the sale of the Bruun Collection,” commented Micheal Fornitz, Director of Stack’s Bowers Galleries Denmark. He continued: “We are elated that the Bruun Collection has received intense international press attention. We are also elated that demand for Bruun’s historic coins is coming not only from Scandinavia, but also from the rest of Europe, the United States, and Asia.”

This demand is driven in part by the collection’s richness in museum quality coins, and the auction of Part II of the Bruun Collection is no exception. One of the auction’s highlights is a gold Danish 5 Ducats of King Frederik III dated 1665. Most likely struck for the king’s personal use, this nearly 2-inch gold coin is thought to be unique in private collections, with the only other known example housed in the National Museum of Denmark. Perhaps the star of the auction and weighing in at over 2 ounces of gold, the Danish gold 20 Ducats of 1788 was thought to have been struck as a present or award for dignitaries during Crown Prince Frederik’s travel to Norway in June 1788. It is the only privately owned example of this rare issue, with two others known in museums in Norway.

“When we embarked upon the L. E. Bruun Collection project, Stack’s Bowers Galleries was counting on the unique circumstances of Bruun’s will and the collection’s 100 year slumber to command the attention, and wallets, of collectors and non-collectors alike,” commented Brian Kendrella, President of Stack’s Bowers Galleries. “But we did not anticipate that the Bruun Collection would share press attention with the geopolitical wrangling that has also thrust Denmark and Greenland into the news headlines. It has been a wild ride as we approach €25 million in total sales from the L. E. Bruun Collection in just six months.”

The L. E. Bruun Collection will be sold in a series of live auctions over the course of three to five years, along with a series of quarterly online-only auctions that commenced in February 2025 and feature more modestly valued coins. Please visit www.StacksBowers.com/the-L-E-Bruun-Collection for additional information. For catalog requests or inquiries about the L. E. Bruun auctions, contact Stack’s Bowers Galleries at +1 949.253.0916 (US) or +45.80 40 49 42 (Denmark) or email infodk@StacksBowers.com.