Coins We Love: Who is R.L. Miles Jr.?

While many of us appreciate the history of both numismatics and the individual coins themselves, there’s also a rich history of collectors and a study of past pedigrees that is important to the hobby. While collecting has evolved greatly over the years, there’s still one core tenant, an appreciation of coins! On our journey to learn more about individual coins, we sometimes happen upon a collector that we don’t know much about. An interesting pedigree came across our desks a few months ago with an intriguing local flavor to us. So, Wes did a little digging into this underrated collector’s story.

R.L. Miles Jr. (Rufus Lawson Miles Jr.)

R.L. Miles Jr. was born on July 26, 1907, in Norfolk. Virginia, to Rufus Lawson Miles and Julia Lawson Miles. He later attended the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in Economics. His father was extremely well known in the state of Virginia for leading J.H. Miles and Company, one of the largest oyster harvesters and packagers in the United States. As an adult, R.L. Miles Jr. worked in multiple positions at the company, retiring as Secretary/Treasurer. The firm opened in 1900 in the Atlantic City area of Norfolk and expanded in the 1960s to include clams and other oceanic life. Unfortunately, the company closed its doors in 2015, so we were unable to check the floorboards for missing coins!

Mr. Miles was not only an avid numismatist, but he also collected classic literature, with the core of his library centered around 1st edition Mark Twain tomes. His overall collection added up to nearly 300 specimens! Interestingly, it also contained an extremely significant letter from Mr. Twain to his brother, frustrated about his pen name and his desire to outsell a fellow author at the time, Bret Harte.

Miles' numismatic journey started at a young age while organizing payroll in his father’s office, seeing how many dates and mint marks he could find. Originally, his favorite design was the Barber Half Dollar. He noticed that the 1914 and 1915 issues were much tougher to locate than some of the earlier dates in the series. Later in his career, he began to hoard the proofs and business strikes of those dates, amassing hundreds of each, according to Harvey G. Stack.

As he matured in the hobby, he filled out many albums and boards with coins he found in circulation. He also began to read about the famous collectors of his time, most notably Louis Eliasberg. It was at this time that the famed Eliasberg Collection was on display in various banks, mostly in the Baltimore, Maryland area, where Mr. Miles had the ability to view the collection. Miles then began to expand his collection, working with the firm Stack’s in New York City. He would regularly travel to New York to bid in their public auctions as well as view their regular retail inventory. His focus quickly moved towards gold, and he desired to one day complete a collection of US Gold coins. Some of the major acquisitions he made in his years of collecting were the Atwater specimen of the 1854-S $2.5, which now resides in a PCGS VF Details Repaired holder, the Wolfson 1875 Proof $3 Gold, and the Wolfson 1870-S Silver Dollar.

Towards the end of his collecting career, he began to display his collection in a pair of banks in the Norfolk area, the Virginia National Bank, where R.L. Miles was a director, and the Bank of Virginia.

In 1968, Miles determined it was time to part with his collection and chose the Stack family to auction the collection for him. Split into two parts, the first consisting of his gold coins and the second his silver and copper pieces. The first part of the sale occurred on October 25th and 26th, 1968, in New York City at the Manhattan-Skyline Suites at the Park Sheraton Hotel. The second part of the sale, again at the Park Sheraton Hotel, occurred on April 10th-12th, 1969, held in conjunction with the Metropolitan New York Numismatic Convention. The sales were a massive success, with the total price realized for both auctions being $1,100,172, setting a then-world record for the highest amount realized from the property of a single collector.

Miles lived until July 1984, when he passed away at the age of 76 in Virginia Beach, Virginia. If it weren’t for the 1904-O $10 CACG MS64 we sold in early December, I would have never had the pleasure of knowing of the collection or Mr. Miles. However, the pedigree pushed me into a deep dive that ended up having a local impact on us! If you enjoyed this background on a different part of numismatics, feel free to let us know!

And, if you have a pedigree you are curious about, we’ll put Wes on the job! Feel free to email him at Wesley.brush@davidlawrence.com! Thanks for reading, and please enjoy the Easter Highlights we have featured below!

Numismatically Yours,

Wes Brush

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