Glasgow, Thistle Bank Dollar, 4/9 countermark on Bolivia 1796-PP 8-Reales, F12

19^th Century token issue, Scotland, Lanarkshire, Glasgow, Thistle Bank, value of Four Shillings and Ninepence countermark on 1796PP Potosi Mint, Bolivia, Eight Reales of King Charles IV of Spain, 4/9 at centre, linear circle and legend surrounding, THISTLE BANK, weight 26.22g (Hodge 045-012 this coin; Manville 45; Burzio 1958, p.91 - 10). Unevenly toned, wear to host both sides, has been slabbed and graded by NGC as F12 for host and "AU strong" for countermark, rare with an interesting provenance.

NGC Certification 2184438-009 with Traveller Collection label.

The Thistle Bank of Glasgow was founded in 1761 by five tobacco merchants at 55 Virginia Street and was also known as the "aristocratic bank". Though it issued banknotes there was a 12 year span of the countermarking of Spanish dollars for local circulation, a time in which the value of silver varied by 25%. Surviving bank records show that 6,000 dollars were countermarked in 1803 with values of 4/6 and then 4/9, though no 4/6 denominations are known today. In 1809 another 2,000 dollars were stamped as 4/9 followed by another 2,900 dollars in 1810 but now marked at 5/-. Lastly in 1814 another 2,160 dollars were stamped at 6/- with 800 existing 5/- stamped dollars adjusted to 6/-. The banks fortunes gradually declined until 1836 when it was acquired by the Glasgow Union Bank. Only a very small percentage of the output survives to this day.

This coin has a most intriguing provenance being hidden away in a European family collection since before World War II. The "Traveller" was a wealthy gentleman who having inherited a portion of a successful family company, made a fortune by promptly selling it and then travelled the world on what was in part an extended honeymoon for the decade between the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the outbreak of World War II. With the financial instability of the great depression and after dabbling at first with gold bullion, he decided to form an enormous collection of world gold coins from ancient to modern whilst travelling the world to see the relevant dealers in their geographical locations to find the most appropriate coins. The result was a collection of some 15,000 coins, 1,700 of which we are told are British, with all going into secure hiding as of 1940 when the nazi regime encroached on where our traveller was located. Sadly, the collector died of a stroke with the stress of the world situation at this time and the collection remained hidden away for decades, stored carefully in individual envelopes in cigar boxes within locked aluminium strongboxes, that were buried in the ground in a field at the collector's property. His wife carried the secret of the burial location for the decades following and reaching the end of her life some 50 years later divulged the secret to her only daughter, whereupon in the 1990s the family retrieved all the coins intact and secured them safely in a bank vault until it was time to sell by auction in 2025. Though we often hear of buried treasure or hoards of coins from antiquity in the ground, it is not often we hear of a sophisticated coin collection actually being buried for decades, an intriguing story to permanently associate with coins of the Traveller provenance which has been written about in newspapers and online worldwide. We are lucky enough to have secured a small number of rare British coins from this esteemed collection.

Provenance:

Most likely Spink Numismatic Circular, December 1937, item 66771a (the Traveller seems to have bought the whole listing of countermark pieces).
Ex The Traveller Collection, part 3.