Nelson Bunker Hunt passed away on Oct. 21, 2014, but because he lost his collection years ago to bankruptcy, his death has not attracted much notice in the collecting world.
So it's fitting then that Mike Markowitz, writing for CoinWeek, has prepared this wonderful tribute to his connoisseurship in collecting ancient coins.
Hunt's collecting interests were not as broad as those of Shiekh Al-Thani of Qatar, but both were among the lucky few able to exchange petro-dollars for some of the world's most beautiful and historically significant ancient coins. The images in Mike's article speak for themselves.
Addendum: For some reason, British archaeo-bloggers Paul Barford and David Gill have been much harder on the late Mr. Hunt than on the late Shiekh Al-Thani. It's hard to fathom why. More anti-Americanism perhaps?
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5 comments:
"a wonderful tribute to his connoisseurship" unfortunately it was not his connoisseurship peter but other peoples.bruce mcnall probably bought most of those coins for hunt.collectors like hunt and weintraub are not real collectors,who collect with a passion and who can sit and gaze in awe at ancient coins for hours but people that see ancient coins and other types of collectables as investments.they are not true collectors in my eyes and they certainly are not connoisseures.
kyri.
I took away from McNall's book that the Hunts were actually interested in the history and art they were buying-- which was not always the case with all his customers in Hollywood.
hi peter,thats not what i took away from the book.if you have it to hand read page 65 again.to the hunts ancient coins were just another commodity,like oil and gold,in fact mcnall says that they wanted to corner the market on byzantine gold coins just like they did with silver.these people were not collectors in the true meaning of the word.true collectors are better off without them,they hype up the market and inflate prices.only the dealers loved them.look at axell guttmann,he published his collection and displayed it as has christian levette,they are real collectors.
kyri.
I read it awhile back and this was based on my recollection so I will have to defer to you if you have the book still. It's always easy to criticize wealthy collectors and it is possible for coins to be considered an investment as well as a hobby, so I won't judge.
The thing with them is that they are typically buying coins well out of the budgets of most collectors so its a bit irrelevant.
As for coins as an investment vehicle, what they netted from the distress sale of their coins and the fate of the Athena fund should be a warning....
For Kyri, this is a good write up:
http://coinsweekly.com/en/News/4?&id=3132
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