Heritage to Offer Donald G. Partrick Collection of Merchant Counterstamps

The extensive holdings of Donald G. Partrick include some of the rarest coins of U.S. series including many ultra-rare and unique colonials, early coppers, and memorable early pattern coins.

Partrick’s interest in Hard Times and Merchant tokens, Civil War tokens, Patriotic tokens, and counterstamps is perhaps less well known. These collections were largely formed well over 30 to 40 years ago, with numerous surprising rarities as well as several famously rare or unique examples.

The Donald G. Partrick counterstamps include more than 950 coins, primarily acquired in the mid-1970s to the mid-’80s. He was a strong buyer at some of the early Presidential Coin & Antique auctions, and was particularly active at the transcendent Roy Van Ormer Collection auction in 1985. Noted dealers and specialists such as George Fuld, Rossa & Tannenbaum, Paul Koppenhaver, Jon Hanson, Stanley Steinberg, and others sought out counterstamped coins for Mr. Partrick’s collection, supplementing his purchases at all of the major counterstamp auctions of the day.

The Partrick Counterstamp Collection is notable for many legendary counterstamps. Among them are several examples of the Washington-Lafayette two-sided pictorial counterstamp on both silver and copper hosts; the unique Benjamin Franklin pictorial counterstamp on a 1799 Bust dollar; Houck’s Panacea on a 1795 Flowing Hair dollar; W. LEVIS on a high-grade 1794 Flowing Hair half dollar; HOBDAY DAGUERREOTYPIST on a Seated half dollar; and W.W. LIGHT/DENTIST on an 1850 Moffat & Co. five dollar Territorial gold piece.

Many seldom-seen counterstamps accompany the great rarities, such as the elusive C. MULLER & BRO. / IMPROVD’ SPECTACLES mark on a Seated half; the “PEBBLES” variant of the S.D. CHOATE / SILVERSMITH mark; and a rare example of the J. Martine counterstamp on an 1829 Bust half.

Among the more than 400 lots in The Donald G. Partrick Collection of Merchant Counterstamps are dozens of multiple coin lots, with opportunities for counterstamp collectors of all interests, specialties, and budgets. This auction is open for bidding now at Coins.HA.com. Bidding will culminate with a live auction to be held exclusively through Heritage Auctions, beginning Sunday, January 3 at 6 PM CT.