Wholesale Sale of Historic Coin Collection in the Works

Nathan Elkins writes about the Deutsche Bank's plans to break up and sell the historic coin collection of the Kings of Hannover. See: http://coinarchaeology.blogspot.com/2009/01/disaster-in-germany-royal-collection-of.html

The historical nature of this collection is probably magnified because Queen Elizabeth II traces her family's ancestry back to Georg Ludwig van Hannover who in 1714 was crowned as English King George I. Indeed, QE II apparently still is viewed as the head of Hannover's royal house.

This appears to be a distress sale of the entire collection and hence entirely different from the recent deaccession of Greek die duplicates from the ANS. See: http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2008/11/ans-to-auction-off-greek-die-duplicates.html. For more about the Deutsche bank's financial problems, see: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/deutsche_bank_ag/index.html?inline=nyt-org

If such a sale goes through, it will be viewed as devastating for scholars and collectors who think that old collections should remain intact for numismatic study. Still, presumably there may be some legal restrictions on the sale that will make a break up of the collection and transfer from Germany less likely than scholars fear.