Important Sommer Islands Twopence Rarity

Undated (ca. 1616) Sommer Islands Twopence. BMA Type I, W-11400. Rarity-7. Small Star Between Legs. Fine-15 (PCGS).

This denomination was unknown to Crosby in 1876 as the first specimen was not discovered until 1877 when it was washed up on a beach near Port Royal. This denomination was first published in the American Journal of Numismatics in October, 1887 as being unique. Very rare: in the past 100 years about two dozen have been discovered, the total about equally divided between the Small and Large Star varieties. Collectors should not be misled into thinking that the Sommer Islands twopence is available on the marketplace with any degree of frequency, however. Of the approximately 21 to 24 specimens traced of both types, fully half of them, 13, are permanently impounded in public collections and will not be offered for sale. That leaves about a dozen that can ever enter private collections, a number small enough to make the denomination a great early American rarity. Averaged out over the past 100 years it seems that examples of the Sommer Islands twopence generally appear at auction about once a decade. The twopence denomination is the second rarest of the four after the threepence and ahead of both the shilling and sixpence. This specimen, like so many others, exhibits an obverse that is far stronger in design than the reverse. The Parsons-Norweb coin was much like that, too, sharper on the front than on the back. This specimen is even, deep green-brown like old bronze. The obverse shows the denomination II clear at the top, the hogge's ridge back sharp and bold, most of its body visible save for its snout and tail, both ears full, the small star mostly visible, the ground line nearly complete, and about as full an inner border of beads as one can wish for. The reverse detail is considerably scarcer. The ship's hull can be seen in part and the rest in imagination, two gun ports are fully round and bold, and some parts of the rigging and superstructure can be discerned amidst the superficial roughness. Elsewhere on this side the detail is obscure. Both the front and back of the coin show some traces of verdigris and, as noted, the surfaces are quite rough in appearance. The piece is nearly fully round, a small crescent shaped lacuna on the right obverse edge requiring notice in this regard. The condition of all Sommer Islands two penny pieces leaves something to be desired because they all seem to have been found objects rather than pieces saved by collectors and preserved for future generations. Many are beach and erosion finds, others come from chance or controlled excavations, the sorts of origins that do not result in pleasantly preserved coins. The present specimen is no exception. Its story of discovery is another of those tales of fortuitous finds that make for great fireside reads. The piece was discovered about a decade and a half ago in a home vegetable garden in Clay Estates, Hamilton Parish on the north shore of Bermuda. There are no old homes in the area that might have accounted for its loss hundreds of years ago, no fortifications nearby, nor docks or slips for trading vessels where one might have been lost overboard. Rather, the area had been an orange grove before being turned to human habitation. The consignor to our March 2012 Baltimore Auction suggested that the coin might have found its way to the garden in which it was found in a load of topsoil delivered some 15 years ago when the garden was first planned out. The soil delivered had been excavated from the environs of an old homesite on the island's south shore of the centrally located Paget Parish. A nearly impossible coin to obtain owing to its infrequent appearances in the numismatic marketplace, in auctions or otherwise. Don't let this one slip away -- unless, of course, you have plenty of idle time to wait for the next Sommer Islands twopence to come along.

From our Baltimore Auction of March 2012, lot 4001; Heritage's sale of the Poulos Family Collection, Part II, September 2019 Long Beach Signature Auction, lot 4465.