Bidding opened at €50,000 and climbed fast. On Wednesday 11 November, lot 5574 in Heritage Auctions Europe's Coins, Currency and Medals sale at IJsselstein reached a hammer price of €300,000, or €369,002 once the buyer's premium was added. The buyer was not named. The result was reported the next day by DutchNews, NOS and AD.

The coin is a half Philipsdaalder dated 1580, struck at Leeuwarden, and the only known example in gold. It is an off-metal trial strike, made with the same dies as the silver half but struck in gold at 13.27 grams, the weight of four ducats. The obverse carries a bust of Philip II, the reverse his crowned arms. Only two silver halves from the same dies survive, one in the British Museum and one in the Fries Museum, and the lot description calls the piece the first coin of the province of Friesland.

Its history is bound up with the Dutch Revolt. On 1 February 1580 the Kanselarij in Leeuwarden, the last Spanish and Catholic stronghold in the city, was occupied by its revolting citizens, and Friesland passed to the Estates. Mintmaster Lodewijk Alewijn was asked to open a new mint, and the first dies were still cut in the name of Philip II, the king the revolt had renounced. The minting phase in Friesland was exceptionally brief, and very few half Philipsdaalders were struck at all.

The coin comes from the collection of Wilco Julius van Welderen baron Rengers (1835-1916), a Frisian nobleman who was mayor of Leeuwarden from 1877 to 1883. Its only recorded public appearance was at the Historical Exhibition of Friesland in the summer of 1877, after which it stayed with the family by descent. NOS reported that it reached the auction house a few months ago in the hands of a woman who did not know what she had. Heritage presents the result as a record for a Dutch provincial coin, though Dutch press treated the claim with caution: AD noted a Kampen eightfold rose noble sold in 2022 for €700,000, and the previous Frisian record stood at about US$105,000.