Choice collection of Russian coins to be auctionede
By Michael Brady
In October, a choice collection of 17th to early 20th century Russian
silver coins will be put on auction at Munich jointly by Oslo Mynthandel
and Giessener Münz Handlung of Munich.
The collection, some 1600 items in all, was amassed by Norwegian
businessman Gerhard Heiberg, and includes almost all the finest coins
of Czarist Russia, minted from the time of Peter the Great (1672-1725)
to the time of the last Czar, Nicholas II (1868-1918). Born in Oslo
in 1939 and educated in Norway, Denmark and California, Heiberg started
the collection in the 1950s, together with a boyhood friend. Through
the years, numismatics remained a strong bond between the two men,
even though Heiberg's career took him abroad, to Liberia, Ghana, the
Philippines and Venezuela, and then back to Norway, to numerous board
positions, and the presidency of the 1994 Olympic Winter Games in
Lillehammer. Somehow, despite a workaholic schedule and frequent travel,
Heiberg always found time to meet his childhood chum and pore over
new acquisitions to the collection, now valued at about one million
dollars.
"Three years ago, when his co-collecting friend succumbed to
cancer, Heiberg found that his will to maintain the collection had
also perished," explains Gunnar Thesen of Oslo Mynthandel, who
now is cataloging the coins for auction.
Although the cataloging has just begun, Thesen points to one of its
nigh unique aspects, that it is both extensive, with coins from almost
all years in the range, and comprehensive, with many variations within
series. "And there are individual attractions," he remarks,
"such as the Dassier ruble of Elizabeth, the 1714 ruble and several
rare Paul I and Alexander I rubles."
