King Farouk’s Numismatic Collection
King Farouk assembled one of the world’s greatest coin collections, only to see its legendary rarities scattered across the globe in a chaotic 1954 auction.
Farouk I (1920–1965) ascended to the Egyptian throne at only the age of 16 after the death of his father, King Fuad I. His reign lasted until 1952, the year he was overthrown by a coup d’état led by the military leaders Gamal Abdel Nasser and Mohamed Naguib. Throughout his reign, the monarch amassed an immense fortune in jewels, money, land, and palaces. King Farouk was always criticized for maintaining an excessively luxurious and lavish lifestyle, which contrasted with the hunger and poverty in his country. He was also a great collector who did not hesitate to use public money to build valuable collections of coins, stamps, jewelry, porcelain, cars, and other items.
Courtesy Sotheby's & Co/Internet Archive.
Most of these assets were confiscated after the coup d’état and incorporated into the national treasury following the official proclamation of the Republic of Egypt in 1953 with Abdel Nasser as president. A large part of the collection was then sold to foreign buyers by the Egyptian authorities, leading to its dispersal.
The impressive coin collection, known as the Palace Collections of Egypt, was assembled by the king during his reign. The name refers to Farouk’s official residence after his accession in 1936, the Royal Palace of Koubbeh, where he housed his collections. The collection was auctioned by the government in 1954 at the palace in Cairo. After the 1952 revolution, the Royal Palace of Koubbeh was converted into a presidential residence.
The Egyptian government hired Baldwin’s to catalog the items and Sotheby’s to publish an auction catalog and conduct the sales event. The collection was hastily auctioned in nine exhausting sessions, during which 8,500 coins and medals were sold. The first session began on February 24, 1954, with the last on March 6. Given the short time frame in which all the pieces were auctioned, most were sold across 2,798 lots. To this day, that 1954 auction is considered the largest of the 20th century, and many experts believe it has not yet been surpassed in importance or volume by any other auction.
Most of the pieces in the collection had been produced in the 19th and 20th centuries. The majority were minted in gold, and many valuable specimens were produced in silver and copper. In addition, 164 platinum coins and a significant collection of bank notes were for sale.
Farouk built and enriched his numismatic collection thanks to the virtually unlimited funds at his disposal. He acquired coins between the late 1930s and the 1940s from renowned foreign dealers and numismatic experts, mainly in the United States. One of them, Hans Schulman from New York, played a key role in building the valuable collection by providing the monarch with many extremely rare coins. Through these countless agents, Farouk bought entire collections from various countries, but mainly in the United States. His spending created such a hole in Egypt’s finances that a $10,000 per-purchase limit was imposed on him. Even so, this represented an immense purchasing power at the time. Purchases exceeding $10,000 required state approval, which meant that sellers of such pieces had to wait longer to receive their money.
The Cairo auction attracted the world’s most renowned numismatic collectors, such as John J. Pittman and Ambassador Henry Webb. In fact, the cores of the famous collections that these men later assembled were built around the pieces acquired at this auction. The event also attracted a significant number of numismatic dealers, including Abe Kosoff and Hans Schulman himself. Everyone knew that the pieces would be sold for well below their real value due to several factors, such as the huge number of lots to be auctioned in such a short time, the remote location of the auction place, and the political instability of the country, which would prevent many interested parties from attending the event. Many of the buyers, like Pittman, even remortgaged their homes or took out credit lines to raise the money needed to buy as many pieces as possible.
The auction was also complicated by the more than $300,000 that Farouk owed Schulman at the time of his dethronement, which Schulman was now claiming from Egyptian authorities. After several rounds of negotiations, the Egyptian government agreed to grant him a loan for that amount to purchase items at the auction. That is why Schulman was the largest buyer at that event, although he soon resold a large portion of the lots he had acquired to other interested buyers to recoup his investment.
For reasons of space, it is not possible to describe all the items auctioned, and for a detailed study of them, consult the 1954 auction catalog.
The bulk of the numismatic collection consisted of North American coins. In this regard, one of the biggest attractions of the auction would be the $20 gold coin, the Double Eagle, minted in 1933. Although the coin had been initially included in one of the lots to be auctioned (lot 185), it was withdrawn shortly before the start of the sessions at the request of the American government, which considered that it had been illegally removed from the U.S. Mint before being melted. The Egyptian government declared that it would return the coin to the United States, but did not keep its word. Nothing was heard of this coin until it reappeared at an auction in 1996. The same coin was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 2022 for £18.9 million, the highest price ever paid for a coin. Farouk’s collection included the only complete set of Double Eagles produced with Augustus Saint Gaudens’ design between 1907 and 1933 that has ever been offered at auction.
Courtesy U.S. Mint/Wikimedia Commons.
Another highlight of the 1954 auction was the legendary 1913 Liberty Head nickel, designed by Charles E. Barber (lot 1695). In fact, Farouk’s impressive collection included two of the five known examples of these coins, albeit at different times.
Courtesy CoinFacts/Wikimedia Commons.
Several examples of one of the most enigmatic pieces in American numismatics, known as Trade Dollars, were also sold. In particular, two of these coins, minted in 1884 and 1885, were sold at lots 1679 and 1680 and are classified as extremely rare.
Although the bulk of the auctioned collection consisted of North American pieces, the lots included many very rare or unique coins from a variety of countries, including 179 lots of gold coins from countries in Central and South America. Sold were items like a unique gold coin of 5 pesos, minted in Mexico in 1887, a rarity in Spanish American numismatics, and sold as part of a lot that also included several issues of the same denomination but minted in different years and at different mints (lot 143).
Also up for sale were 18 gold ingots from Brazilian Emperor Pedro II, comprising almost all of those currently known, as most had been melted down (lots 13–31). These ingots were mined in Serro Frío, Brazil, during an early 18th-century gold rush.
The Central American series included the “jewel of Cuban numismatics,” the 20-peso gold coin minted in 1916 (lot 88). The coin auctioned was of brilliant proof quality and was likely acquired by Farouk in the United States. Records from the Philadelphia Mint indicate that only ten copies of this coin were minted as gifts, not for circulation, with the whereabouts of most unknown. Two have been located in private collections, while a third is on display at the Numismatic Museum in Havana, Cuba. A lot comprising the remaining denominations minted in gold between 1915 and 1916 was also auctioned (lot 89).
Courtesy Gallica Digital Library/ Wikimedia Commons.
As expected, the Old Continent was also represented with countless unique pieces. For example, the auction included 140 lots of French gold coins, including three extremely rare gold écu piedforts (lots 491–493).
Other European countries represented in the King Farouk collection included England, Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy. Many of the pieces auctioned were extremely rare, including an 1810 Dutch 20-gulden gold coin bearing the effigy of King Louis Napoleon on the obverse (lot 921).
The auctioned collection also included valuable Asian specimens, such as a Japanese 20-yen gold coin produced in proof quality in the 1870s. This piece turned out to be the highest denomination issued during Japan’s first minting in this metal. The coin was auctioned as part of several lots that included the remaining denominations minted in gold in different years (lots 1366–1372).
Courtesy National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History/Wikimedia Commons.
Although antique pieces are in the minority, some of those auctioned are priceless, including the gold coins from the Ptolemaic period in Egypt (lots 1434–1449), several Roman gold aurei and solidi (lots 1451–1466), and Roman gold ingots (lots 1467–1470).
The auctioned collection also included 164 pieces of various origins made of platinum and grouped into 97 lots (lots 1471–1568). These represented the largest group of coins made of this metal ever auctioned together. An example is a unique Spanish specimen from 1904 with a face value of 40 pesetas, manufactured at the London Mint (lot 1519).
Farouk’s fondness for collecting pattern coins, particularly offset patterns (produced in a metal, often gold, other than that used in the final minting), was well known. These specimens were sometimes commissioned by the monarch himself and are mostly unique. The Cairo auction included many of these coins.
Courtesy Sotheby & Co/Internet Archive.
A 1855 French gold 100-franc pattern coin (lot 575) that was also auctioned has a design identical to that adopted for the regular strikes, except that it includes a letter “A” above the engraver’s initials “BARRE” on the obverse and a hand with a finger pointing to the year engraved to the left on the reverse.
No less striking were the large number of medals, many of them gold, and the 56 lots of bank notes that were also auctioned (lots 2743–2798). These lots included tens of thousands of bank notes of various origins and rarity.
This impressive numismatic collection assembled by Farouk is probably the largest and most valuable ever to have been in the hands of a single private collector. Unfortunately, it is also famous for the unorthodox way it was sold and dispersed. The Egyptian authorities simply wanted to liquidate the collection quickly. That is why they did not hesitate to group many pieces (both rare and common) into the same lots, which made it extremely difficult for buyers to access only the pieces they were interested in.
Courtesy of the author.
The descriptions included in the catalog were insufficient and incomplete in most cases. In addition, the difficulty of accessing the site where the pieces were auctioned (Egypt was experiencing a revolution with a highly unstable political situation) meant that few buyers traveled to Cairo. All these factors explain why many unique pieces were sold at unusually low prices. It is estimated that King Farouk’s collection would currently be worth more than $150 million.
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