Bidding ended quickly, capped at a high of $360,000.

Whoever made the offer – names haven’t been made public at this point – is buying both a piece of history and one of the numismatic world’s great rarities: a 1793 Strawberry Leaf large cent.

For quality, it’s considered to be head and shoulders above any of the three others of its kind known to exist. And it has a champion pedigree among collectors, known both as the Parmelee Strawberry Leaf and as the plate coin used in guidebooks for years.

Last sold at public auction 114 years ago, the coin had been owned by a longtime resident of Oxford and her family since 1941.

Until Tuesday evening, that is. That’s when the prize was auctioned by American Numismatic Rarities of Wolfeboro, N.H. The auction was staged in Baltimore, a major feature of that city’s annual Coin and Currency Convention.

Dan Cunliffe Sr., owner of Republic Jewelry & Collectibles of Auburn, said of the final price on the piece: “That’s about right.”

When a 15 percent buyer’s fee imposed by the auctioneers is added in, the coin will change hands for a tidy $414,000, he noted.

Earlier in the day, when preliminary bidding stood at $196,000, Cunliffe had scoffed. “I was offered more than that for it when I had it in my possession.”

Cunliffe recognized the coin almost at once when one of its owners brought it to his store this past summer. He worked with her to have the coin graded and to connect her with ANR, resulting in Tuesday’s sale.

He likened the copper cent featuring Liberty’s blowing hair to “the holy grail of coins.”

The coin isn’t uncirculated, but ANR’s auction book notes it’s “the finest known specimen … numerically twice as fine as the next best example.”

The same book offers applause for the Staples family for their stewardship of the coin over the years.

Roscoe E. Staples II, a businessman from the Oxford area, purchased the Strawberry Leaf in 1941, according to the ANR auction catalog; it was an anniversary gift for Staples’ wife, Beulah.

Soon afterward, Staples, who was also an officer in the Maine National Guard, was activated to duty with the 103rd Infantry.

As ANR relates it, Staples was overseeing regimental action to secure the Munda airfield in the Solomon Islands when a Japanese sniper shot him down on Aug. 2, 1943. Coincidentally, a day earlier, a young patrol boat skipper named John F. Kennedy had run his vessel into another off Munda’s coast.

For his gallantry, Staples was posthumously awarded the Silver Star.

“We feel it is important to recognize the character and contributions of a little-known past owner of this famous coin,” ANR pronounced in the auction catalog. “While Proskey, Parmelee, Johnson and others are well-known to numismatists and many rare coins can be traced to their hands, Staples’ most notable contribution clearly came outside of the realm of numismatics. Since Staples’ death, the coin has remained with his family, still encased in the 1941 James Kelly envelope. (Staples had purchased the coin from Kelly.) Its significance both as family heirloom and numismatic rarity have always been appreciated.”

The coin had been kept by his widow, Beulah Staples, until her death this past July at the age of 92.

Like her husband, Beulah Staples was an accomplished person. Her obituary notes she was a Bates graduate, received her master’s from Simmons College, and had worked at the Library of Congress and the Maine State Library before becoming Oxford’s town manager in the 1950s.

Cunliffe said Tuesday that he stands to get what should amount to several thousand dollars as a finder’s fee from ANR for his role in bringing the family and the auctioneer together.

Cunliffe said he’s looking forward to another auction, likely to be held sometime next year, featuring more of the coins in the Staples family collection.

“They should bring as much, maybe more” as the $360,000 Strawberry Leaf, he predicted.

As for now, Cunliffe says he’ll keep looking for those rare, prized coins. He’s sure there are more to surface.

After all, he said, “There’s always something out there.”