From the very moment I entered the smaller Christie’s/Spink auction room in New York that cold windy December day there was a bitter metallic taste in my mouth from the static electricity in the air. You could feel your skin crawling and smell the excitement throughout the room even before the bidding started! But once underway I could hardly breath, I was so damn excited. The day had finally come, now we would see who would walk away with Pablo Gerber’s most prized treasures, I knew it was going to be a long and trying day.
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Like so many of the great collectors of Mexican coins that I never met, I’m very proud to own coins from their collections and I’m especially proud of some of the Gerber pieces. For someone who has collected as long as I have (well over twenty years) it is unbelievable that a single man could amass such a collection in less than ten years. Mr. Gerber’s Mexican collection ranks as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Mexican collection ever sold and contained such depth that there today exists only a single collection that is larger and more complete for the entire span of Mexican history owned by a private collector.
For the Mexican coin collector there are three important books about this collection. The first was produced by another of the great Mexican coin collectors from Mexico, whom I did know and greatly respected, Jamie Varon Modiano. Monedas Mexicanas Coleccion Privada Pablo Gerber Moser gave the few collectors able to secure a copy their first look into what Pablo Gerber was able to do in a very short time. I can’t speak for the others, but this book published in 1987 made me dizzy and took my breath away as I scanned its pages for the first time and my collecting interests were very narrow at that time. Oh, how I would have loved to sit and talk to Mr. Gerber about his collection?
Spink America offered the Gerber Mexican Collection in two sales, the first took place on December 5, 1995 and covered all Colonial coins and Gerber’s gold through the Republic Period ending in 1905. This is one of those “must have” catalogs if you collect these coins, but also beware that there are also many Republican gold pieces lumped into large lots at the end of the second Gerber Sale, that also contained many very rare and nice pieces too and thus were overlooked by many collectors!
One of the problems one has when trying to recap a sale of this magnitude; is where do you begin and what do you leave out because of space limitations? Do you only point out the rare and thus expensive coins or do you try to make others see just how great a collector the owner was because of what the coins can tell us about his personality? I will select the second one for the Gerber collection, simply because there are far too many great coins for me to list in this limited space.
Fortunately several months in advance I had the opportunity to see a list (without photos) of the coins for the first sale and it blew off my socks! The list contained 553 Mexican Republic gold pieces (the great Norweb collection had 358) and this didn’t include an additional 169 Republican gold pieces in the second sale that I knew nothing about at the time.
I knew I had to go to New York well before the auction to study Gerber’s 177 Republican 8 Escudos for my book and to compare them with my collection. It took several months, numerous phone calls and letters before it was agreed when I could come and how to ship my coins to Christie’s/Spink. Public viewing was to begin on Saturday December 2, 1995 at 10:00 am and was to end on Monday December 4. I was told I would have to be done before the public viewing begun. I look back now and can only wish I had had a laptop computer in those days, in fact this sale was the final straw leading me to purchase one.
My wife and I arrived in New York City a week ahead of time and my coins the week before. I spent the first two days quickly showing my wife the sights and sounds of New York and telling her how to get around the city, for I was going to be very busy for the next few days. On Tuesday November 28th I was so excited I arrived over an hour before Christie’s/Spink opened and I sat in a little snack bar a block down the street drinking coffee and planning how I was going to study and compare so many coins in such a short time.
Once there I was given a tiny room that had at one time been a storage room for office supplies, with two chairs and a very small table, at least the light in the little room was good. A young man brought me the boxes containing my coins from the safe room and then my first box of Pablo Gerber’s coins. The young man helping me sat down opposite me saying he would have to be in the room at all times. This was fine with me, all I wanted to do was get started!
I finally finished my task sometime late in the afternoon of Thursday 30th of November. I had my list broken down into four sections: 1st the Gerber coins I already had in higher grades; 2nd Gerber coins I already had, but he had in higher grades, 3rd Gerber coins I didn’t have, but needed and 4th Gerber coins I had to have… no matter what happened!
The rest is history, I didn’t get all of the coins I wanted, I couldn’t afford everything I needed, and I missed two coins because of miscommunications, but I walked away a real happy camper.
And I learned many things about Mr. Gerber I had not known before. Several people had told me he was much like Virgil Brand, he had all the money in the world and he bought any and everything that was offered to him, no matter the cost or what it was, but he was not a dedicated numismatist.
Don’t believe a word of this, if there were multi DAM (Date/Assayer/Mintmark) coins in his collection, they weren’t dupes or junk … they were each individual varieties! I found more unlisted 8 Escudo varieties in those three days than in any other period of time in my research.
The big regret I have today, is that I didn’t examine all his other Republic escudo gold and attribute all of them, because there is no telling what rare and unlisted varieties lurked in those 500+ gold coins?
The second Gerber sale occurred on June 3, 1996 in Los Angeles, California and it was supposed to contain the balance of the Gerber collection. I had seen some of the many interesting pieces for this sale while in New York, so I elected not to attend the auction and look at the remaining 37 Republic 8 Escudos for I had been told they were all dupes. Alas that wasn’t the case, later I saw the coins from several of the large lots and they were again not duplicates but varieties, oh well we can’t all be perfect all the time.
I ended up buying about ten coins and numerous patterns from this second sale and still kick my butt for knowing less than I should about Pablo Gerber and his coins, for Mr. Gerber was and still is one of the truly great Mexican coin collectors of all times.
Now it is up to you to find these two catalogs and one book, because believe me no Mexican Numismatic library is complete without them. And then maybe, just maybe, you can help me find those coins missing from the inventory given in Jamie’s book versus those in the sale catalogs?
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