Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
It was a heavy calamity, and one from which the old collector never fully
recovered. Sir Isaac Newton's historic Fido did not do nearly the amount
of irremediable damage when he overturned the lamp upon his master's
papers. The actual pecuniary loss, reckoning at cost prices, was in the
neighborhood of nineteen thousand dollars. The market value of such a
collection was of course vastly greater, and increasing all the time at a
good deal faster rate than compound interest. It was somewhat of a
coincidence that Mr. Mickley had received and refused what he records as a
"tempting offer", for the entire collection only a short time before the
robbery.
The ardent passion of a lifetime was now chilled, and his one desire
seemed to be to get rid of his remaining coins and of the responsibility
which keeping them entailed. Such, however, was the completeness of
Mickley's literary methods of condensing, that an entry of three or four
lines made in his diary on the night of the robbery is all that he had to
write about the appalling loss. A week or two afterward he records in the
same volume the disposal of all the remaining coins, with an air of great
relief, as he adds, "I do not doubt I should be robbed again if I kept
them." A large box full of the most valuable had been taken, for
safe-keeping, to the Mint just after the robbery; but these were sold with
the rest. It is understood that this remnant of the original lot was
disposed of for about sixteen thousand dollars, the largest purchaser
being Mr, Woodward, of Roxbury, Massachusetts. The dollar of 1804 went to
a New York collector for the enormous sum of seven hundred and fifty
dollars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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