In 2006, the fifth Meissner-Neumann auction was held in Prague. It was there and then that the collection of the Prague banker Karel Hackenschmied was auctioned, which included an extremely rare 2 Ducat from 1937. It is not known exactly how many pieces of the 2 Ducat coin were struck with this particular vintage, as the official records from the mint only specify the number of coins struck in a given year, but not the year they bear. Therefore, there is conflicting information about the existing number of 2 Ducats 1937, namely 4 or 8. In any case, it is an extremely rare vintage, of which only 2 specimens have appeared in the offers of auction houses to date.
The first one featured at the 2006 auction and it is this very specimen which is currently on offer under lot no. 428. 17 years ago in the Meissner-Neumann auction, it reached a price of 1.38 million Czech crowns, i. e. almost 50,000 euros including the auction premium. The second offered specimen was a 2 Ducat 1937 from the collection of the businessman Jaroslav Kokolus. This coin was sold in the 13th Macho & Chlapovič auction in 2017 for 630,000 euros including the auction premium. The starting price of the 2 Ducat 1937, which is sure to stir a lot of interest among bidders at our upcoming auction, is 650,000 euros. It is the best-preserved specimen of this coin ever offered at an auction.
Who was Karel Hackenschmied?
Karel Hackenschmied was an important official of the Austro-Hungarian Bank, which means that he was right at the source. Hackenschmied‘s collection was extraordinary in that it was comprehensive and contained a large number of rare coins, especially from the time of Emperor Francis Joseph I of Austria. After 1918, Hackenschmied worked as an advisor at the Czechoslovak Ministry of Finance and collected only the finest pieces that the numismatic market had to offer at the time. He bought mostly from the wellknown Prague numismatist and antiquarian Karel Chaura.
Karel Hackenschmied was a member of the numismatic society in Prague. He came from an old Prague Jewish family and he himself was childless. His collection was locked in a bank safe in 1937/1938 and saw the light of day only in 2006 when it went up for sale at the Meissner-Neumann auction house. According to Jan Neumann, president of the Antique Dealers Association and co-owner of the auction house at the time, it was the rare 2 Ducat 1937 that particularly enhanced Hackenschmied‘s collection.
