We are thrilled to present the Frank Waley Collection of British hammered silver and milled gold coins at SGB auctions, 11th December. Having been off the market for over 50 years, this collection features some of the finest known examples and some of the rarest examples of the civil war provincial mints. Below, Neil Paisley shares his insight into this incredibly special third and final tranche of the Waley collection.
The man behind the collection.
Frank Raphael Waley OBE MC (1893-1987) came from a family of London based stockbrokers and bankers. His hobbies included collecting dwarf daffodils (narcissi) in the high Pyrenees which he propagated in Kent and led to him becoming a founder member of the Alpine Garden Society. Coin collecting was another of his lifetime passions, through which he developed a long-standing relationship with Baldwins. He first started collecting coins during the second world war, when gold coins were both bought and sold by banks – at that time he realised that not all the coins that the banks had were bullion and some interesting numismatic gold could be bought just for the price of gold – his granddaughter remembers him telling her that ‘he was able to buy some great ones in those days!’ Indeed, some of the gold coins here may have come from this period, but sadly they have no provenances.
This planted the seed of collecting and for the next thirty or so years he would visit Baldwins and started to build up a collection of coins. He would visit Adelphi Terrace and deal with AHB himself and many of the tickets to the coins here are in AHB’s own hand.
The Collection
He specialised in coins of the Civil War and there are some superb rarities such as the Hartlebury Castle Halfcrown and also some outstandingly good condition pieces such as the Henry VIII Testoon or the Shrewsbury Half Pound, and particularly the Anne Five guineas - which is the second finest graded. The collection also includes a number of siege pieces which we've explored in a little more detail here.
Collecting at this time he was able to acquire coins from major collections that had recently been dispersed - such as Lincoln, Murdoch, Morrieson, Lingford, Ryan, Paget, French and others, and over the years built up a substantial and important collection.
