2017-11-21 Tue

Bruun Rasmussen of Copenhagen sold a bundle of 50 circulated Chinese Chi’ing Dynasty 500-cash notes of 1854 for a whopping $219,000, against an estimate of $6,260, making it the highest bid for a coin auction in Denmark.

The notes returned to the bank, were tied together with a string and sealed with a tag. The string and the bundle are intact. It’s the only example of its kind found outside a museum.

The bundle belonged to the Danish art collector and engineer Sophus Black (1882 to 1960) who was in China for the Great Northern Telegraph Company from 1902 to 1931. He collected different kinds of Chinese art, some of which are in the Danish National Museum.