Auction dates for the second part of the famous and extensive collection of coins created by the “Danish Butter King,” L.E. Bruun, are scheduled.

Stack’s Bowers Galleries on Oct. 15 revealed that part two of the collection of Scandinavian coinage, which is expected to be the most valuable collection of world coins to ever come to market, is set for March 13 to 16, 2025, at the Hotel Baur au Lac in Zürich, Switzerland

Part II follows the inaugural auction of the L.E. Bruun Collection: A Corpus of Scandinavian Monetary History. Held Sept. 14, 2024, in Copenhagen, Part I’s prices realized for 286 lots totaled €14,820,900 (approximately $16.5 million U.S.), a record for a single numismatic auction in Scandinavia.

Part II will offer a wider spectrum of Scandinavian numismatics, ranging from the Viking period through the 19th century, with a broader geographic reach as well.

Augmenting the core Danish, Norwegian and Swedish items will be an extensive and much-anticipated offering of coins from the Danish duchies of Schleswig-Holstein, an area that was long under Danish rule but was lost to Germany after the Second Schleswig War in 1864.

The second offering from the Bruun Collection will also present a greater diversity of price points, with an aggregate estimate in the range of €5 million to €7 million ($5.428 million to $7.599 million U.S.).

The approximately 700 items to be sold next March in Zürich will range in value from €1,000 ($1,086 U.S.) to many hundreds of thousands of euros, whereas most items in Bruun Part I sold in excess of €10,000 ($10,856  U.S.) each.

“Coin collectors have been anticipating the sale of the Bruun Collection for over a century, and we had many crestfallen collectors with more modest budgets who could only watch from the sidelines during the first Bruun auction last month,” said Michael Fornitz, Director of Stack’s Bowers Galleries Denmark. “With the higher lot count and lower average price point of Bruun II this coming spring, collectors of all means will be able to give chase to some of Bruun’s long-hidden numismatic treasures.”

Bruun backstory

The story of Lars Emil Bruun and his famed collection has by now been told around the world.

A wealthy butter magnate, Bruun invested in real estate, multiplying his wealth. This gave him the means to build a massive coin collection before his death Nov. 21, 1923.

He left behind what is believed to be the world’s greatest private collection of the coins, medals and paper money of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

According to Stack’s Bowers, “When the final coin from the Bruun Collection has been auctioned, this cabinet will stand as the most valuable collection of international coins ever to have been sold.”

His collection was shelved for a century, kept as a reserve in case the Royal Danish Coin and Medal Collection was damaged. One century later, his heirs are free to sell the coins, and they’re now entering the market, with Stack’s Bowers Galleries awarded the contract for this world-renowned collection, which was insured for 500 million Danish kroner (about $72.5 million U.S.).

The Bruun Collection will be sold in a series of live auctions over the next three to five years, along with a series of online-only auctions commencing in early 2025 that will feature more modestly valued coins.

For more information, visit www.StacksBowers.com/the-L-E-Bruun-Collection.

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