NEW YORK (AP) – An 1880 bank note from the Kingdom of Hawaii sold for $268,000 on Thursday in an auction of coins, medals and bills from the estate of Samuel Mills Damon, a banker whose father settled in Hawaii.

The note – the first $10 bill issued by the kingdom – far exceeded its pre-sale estimate of between $20,000 and $40,000, said Doyle New York, the auctioneer and appraiser that handled the sale.

A proof set of coins from 1876, including a $20 Double Eagle, fetched $548,000, and eight Hawaiian silver dollars from 1883 sold for between $51,000 and $192,000 each, Doyle said on its Web site.

The specimens in Thursday’s auction, stored in a vault for decades, fetched a total of $3,884,000, Doyle said.

Damon, who died in 1925, was the son of minister Samuel Chenery Damon and Julia Sherman Mills, who arrived in Honolulu in 1842.

The younger Damon served as Hawaii’s finance minister from 1889 to 1900. Until recently, his estate was the fourth-largest private landowner in Hawaii.

Executors began dissolving the estate following the death of his last living grandchild in November 2004.

The Hawaiian constitutional monarchy was overthrown by a group of U.S. businessmen and sugar planters in 1893. Hawaii citizens approved U.S. statehood in 1959.

The Doyle Web site didn’t identify the buyers or say what commission, if any, was added to or included in the sale prices.



On the Net:

Doyle New York: http://www.doylenewyork.com

AP-ES-03-23-06 2125EST


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