Million Dollar Saint-Gaudens Victory Statue At ANA World’s Fair of Money

A rare example of a reduced-size early 20th-century New York City landmark statue, created by acclaimed sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, will be publicly displayed at the American Numismatic Association 2023 Pittsburgh World’s Fair of Money®.

Entitled Victory, the statue is reminiscent of the great artist’s renowned 1907-1933 U.S. Double Eagle gold coins design. The same female model posed for Saint-Gaudens for both of those projects.

Previously in a private collection for decades, the stunning statue was purchased for $1,168,400 at a Sotheby’s auction by Kevin Lipton of Kevin Lipton Rare Coins in Beverly Hills, California this past April. He now will exhibit it for the public to see at the ANA Pittsburgh convention, August 8-12.

"The three-and-a-half-foot tall gilded bronze figure on a four-inch marble base is a reduction of Saint-Gaudens’ famous ten-and-half foot tall Victory statue at the General William Tecumseh Sherman Monument in Grand Army Plaza at the Southeast corner of New York’s Central Park. It was dedicated in 1903, and only three reduction examples are privately owned, including this one," said Lipton.

After Saint-Gaudens died in 1907, his widow Augusta Fisher Homer Saint-Gaudens authorized the creation of eight reductions. In addition to the three privately held, five today are in the collections of museums or institutions, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, or at national historic sites, including Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Sotheby’s described the Victory statue as "designed to emulate the allegorical female figure of the Greek goddess Nike."

"It took Saint-Gaudens 11 years from 1892 to 1903 to painstakingly create the Sherman Monument and Victory statue which art critics have described as an American masterpiece," explained Lipton.

"Owning one of these specially-made, century-old Saint-Gaudens statues has been on my bucket list since I was a teenager and saw one for sale at an antiques show in New York in 1977. It was priced at $60,000 back then, well beyond the budget of a 17-year-old aspiring coin dealer from New Jersey," explained Lipton.

"I first saw the full-size Central Park monument statue when I was a child. Over the years, I’ve owned some of the most historic Saint-Gaudens coins, including a 1907 Ultra-High Relief Double Eagle, but this statue eluded me until recently. Now, it is time to share this masterpiece with the public," he stated.

The model for Victory was Harriette Eugenia Anderson who later was the artist’s model for what are known today as America’s most beautiful coins, the Saint-Gaudens $20 denomination Double Eagles.

"The face on the statue is virtually the same as on the gold coins," Lipton noted.

The statue reduction that will be displayed at the ANA 2023 World’s Fair of Money convention was previously in the extensive art collection of Erving (1926-2018) and Joyce (1927-2022) Wolf. Sotheby’s described their Fifth Avenue apartment in New York City as decorated with art that was "a collection that embodies the American spirit in such tremendous depth and breadth."

The Victory statue will be at booth #606 in Halls A and B of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, 1000 Fort Duquesne Blvd., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the site of the ANA 2023 World’s Fair of Money.

For additional information about Kevin Lipton Rare Coins, call (310) 712-8118. For additional information about the ANA convention, visit www.WorldsFairofMoney.com.