Wilhelmina, who was Queen of the Netherlands from 1890-1948, is now royalty of the numismatic realm.
An 1891 Netherlands 25 Cents, or kwartje, sold for €1.045.000 ($1,130,376) at HA-Europe Monday, becoming the most expensive Dutch coin ever sold.
Heritage Auctions Europe-Cooperatief is an affiliate of Heritage Auctions, the world’s leading auctioneer of coins and currency.
The previous record for the most ever paid for a Dutch coin was €700.000 ($757,190) paid in 2021 for an 8-fold gold rosenobel; the best result for a Netherlands Kingdom (1806-present) was the €200.000 paid last year for an 1867 gold double ducat.
"This coin was the cover piece for our catalog, but we expected a hammer price between €300.000 and €400.000," says Jacco Scheper, Managing Director of HA-Europe. "Nobody expected this world record."
Bids came in quickly for the coin, which opened at €300.000 before soaring to its record result in a matter of two minutes.
The 1891 quarter is considered the pinnacle of "Kingdom coins." This record-setting example, which Scheper called "the Holy Grail for coin collectors" in RTL Nieuws, was the only one available on the open collecting market, and has had just four owners in the past century.
This continued a strong week for World and Ancient coins at Heritage, whose CSNS World & Ancient Coins Platinum Session and Signature® Auction brought $11,904,407 as part of Heritage’s Central States Numismatic Society auction events that reached a combined $52,341,143.
About Heritage Auctions
Heritage Auctions is the largest fine art and collectibles auction house founded in the United States, and the world’s largest collectibles auctioneer. Heritage maintains offices in New York, Dallas, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Palm Beach, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Hong Kong and Tokyo.
Heritage also enjoys the highest Online traffic and dollar volume of any auction house on earth (source: SimilarWeb and Hiscox Report). The Internet’s most popular auction-house website, HA.com, has more than 1,750,000 registered bidder-members and searchable free archives of more than 6,000,000 past auction records with prices realized, descriptions and enlargeable photos. Reproduction rights routinely granted to media for photo credit.
