Kevin Lipton Opens New Beverly Hills Gallery
A new Beverly Hills gallery has brought together early U.S. gold, landmark American currency, fine art, historic antiques, and one extraordinary connection between American sculpture and coinage.
Lipton Coins, Fine Art & Antiques has opened its gallery at 9478 W. Olympic Blvd. in Beverly Hills, California. The operation serves rare coin and paper money collectors as well as buyers and sellers of precious metals, fine art, decorative arts, and antiques.
However, one object immediately separates the gallery from a conventional coin shop.
A three-and-a-half-foot gilded bronze reduction of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ famous Victory stands among the displays. The gallery says the sculpture carries a $3 million insurance valuation.
For numismatists, that statue carries special significance. Saint-Gaudens’ monumental Victory helped give birth to the Liberty figure on his celebrated $20 Double Eagle.
Early U.S. Gold Takes Center Stage
The gallery’s current numismatic inventory includes several major early U.S. gold coins.
Among them is a 1796 Capped Bust Right Quarter Eagle with no stars on the obverse, graded NGC MS60. The coin represents the first year of the $2.50 denomination. More importantly, the No Stars design appeared only in 1796. Current research generally places its original production at 963 pieces.
The gallery also lists a 1796/5 Capped Bust Right Half Eagle graded NGC MS64. Early Mint workers created the overdate by modifying an earlier 1795-dated die. Mint State survivors rank among the most elusive early $5 gold pieces. PCGS records an original mintage of 6,196 for the 1796/5 issue.
Another centerpiece is an 1879 Flowing Hair $4 Stella graded NGC PF65 Cameo. Congress considered the unusual four-dollar gold denomination during efforts to create an American coin that could compete more easily in international commerce. The proposal never became a regular circulating coin. Nevertheless, the Stella became one of the most recognizable U.S. patterns. NGC estimates that fewer than 500 examples of the 1879 Flowing Hair issue survive.
Finally, the display includes an 1804 Capped Bust Right $10 Eagle with the Crosslet 4, graded PCGS MS62. The 1804 circulation-strike eagle marked the end of the denomination’s first era. President Thomas Jefferson ordered $10 gold coin production halted at the end of 1804 as U.S. gold coins increasingly left the country for melting and export. Regular eagle production did not resume until 1838.
Together, the four coins give visitors a compact look at some of the most challenging corners of early American gold.
Rare Currency Includes an Indian Territory Discovery
The paper money displays reach just as deeply into American financial history.
One standout is an uncut $10-$10-$10-$20 Series 1882 Brown Back sheet from the First National Bank of Holdenville, Charter 5270. Holdenville originally stood within the Creek Nation in Indian Territory before Oklahoma statehood.
The sheet ranks among the most important surviving pieces of Indian Territory national currency.
Heritage Auctions offered it in April 2025 as a newly discovered sheet graded PMG Very Fine 30. Heritage described it as one of only three reported Territorial Brown Back sheets from banks in what became Oklahoma. Of those, one comes from Oklahoma Territory and two come from Indian Territory. The Holdenville piece stands alone as the only known $10-$10-$10-$20 Brown Back sheet from Indian Territory. It realized $84,000.
The gallery also displays several high-denomination large-size notes.
One is an 1869 $100 Legal Tender Note, Friedberg 168, with the Allison-Spinner signature combination and a PMG Very Fine 25 grade. The Friedberg 168 ranks among the major large-size $100 types of the Reconstruction era.
Another is an 1891 $50 Treasury, or Coin, Note, Friedberg 376, bearing the Rosecrans-Nebeker signature combination. The gallery lists the note as PMG Choice Extremely Fine 45 and pedigreed to the Dean Oakes Collection. Friedberg 376 features William H. Seward and represents the $50 denomination in the short-lived Treasury Note series authorized after the Sherman Silver Purchase Act.
A Boston rarity also appears in the display: a $100 Original Series National Bank Note from the Blackstone National Bank, Charter 514. PCGS graded the note Choice About New 55. Heritage sold the same type and grade from that bank for $120,000 in May 2024.
The gallery also lists a Series 1902 Red Seal $10, Friedberg 613, from the First National Bank of Puerto Rico at San Juan, graded PMG Very Fine 20.
A Banknote From West Hollywood
Another California note carries a remarkably local connection.
The gallery has a Friedberg 633 Series 1902 Plain Back $10 from the West Hollywood National Bank of Crescent Heights.
The bank carried Charter 11880 and operated in the community that became West Hollywood. Previous auction research identified only one surviving large-size note from the bank. The gallery describes its example as PMG 63.
The denomination also has an unusually narrow history. Records indicate that the bank issued only $10 notes. An example surfaced publicly after remaining with the original owner’s family for nearly a century.
Saint-Gaudens’ Victory Connects Sculpture With America’s Most Famous Gold Coin
Yet the gallery’s most visually commanding numismatic object may not be a coin at all.
The gilded bronze Victory reduction traces its design to Saint-Gaudens’ General William Tecumseh Sherman Monument at Grand Army Plaza, at the southeast corner of New York’s Central Park.
Saint-Gaudens began the Sherman project in 1892. The completed monument debuted in 1903. A winged female figure of Victory strides ahead of Sherman and his horse.
That figure later became part of American coinage history.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes that Saint-Gaudens derived the striding Liberty on his $20 gold piece from Victory. President Theodore Roosevelt had asked Saint-Gaudens to transform America’s coinage, and the resulting Double Eagle debuted in 1907.
Harriette “Hettie” Eugenia Anderson modeled for the Victory figure. Historical research also connects Anderson directly with Saint-Gaudens’ later coinage work.
The Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park documentation records that the sculptor sought her out again while developing the gold coin designs in 1906.
As a result, the gallery’s bronze reduction creates an unusually direct bridge between American sculpture and one of the most celebrated designs in U.S. numismatics.
Only Eight Victory Reductions
Saint-Gaudens died in 1907. Several years later, his widow, Augusta Fisher Homer Saint-Gaudens, arranged to reduce the monumental Victory figure.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art records that Augusta reached an agreement with Saint-Gaudens’ master modeler Gaëtan Arisson in 1911. Gorham Manufacturing Company in Providence, Rhode Island, began producing the gilded bronze reductions in 1912.
Historical accounts identify eight reductions. Five reside in museum, institutional, or historic-site collections. Those holdings include examples associated with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, and Arlington National Cemetery.
Three remain in private hands.
Collectors last saw Lipton’s example in a major numismatic setting at the 2023 American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money in Pittsburgh. Lipton had acquired the sculpture earlier that year for $1,168,400.
Today, Lipton Coins, Fine Art & Antiques says the piece carries a $3 million insurance valuation.
Coins, Art, Precious Metals, and Tiffany Under One Roof
The new gallery extends well beyond numismatics.
Gallery director Bryan Abbott said the operation provides buying, selling, and professional evaluation services for rare coins and paper money. It also handles gold, silver, platinum, and palladium items.
In addition, the gallery deals in original fine art ranging from established masters to modern artists. Its holdings and areas of interest include decorative arts, historic antiques, and original Tiffany Studios lamps. The firm’s website also lists appraisal and evaluation services across coins, currency, jewelry, antiques, art, and precious metals.
For collectors, however, the combination of rare early gold, landmark American currency, and Saint-Gaudens’ Victory gives the Beverly Hills space an unmistakably numismatic identity.
And few gallery objects can tell a story that travels so naturally from a New York monument to Theodore Roosevelt’s coinage renaissance—and finally to one of America’s most famous gold coins.
Gallery Information
Lipton Coins, Fine Art & Antiques is located at 9478 W. Olympic Blvd., Floor 1, Beverly Hills, California 90212.
The gallery opens Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Evening and weekend appointments are available. The main office number is 310-939-9399. Additional information appears at LCFAA.com. The gallery’s current website confirms the address, hours, and telephone number.
