The collection of coins formed by Capt. Roderick Maingy Murchison (1830-1873), dispersed at two Sotheby sales in the mid 1860s, is one of the most prestigious in the British series, and the present note seeks to explain the development of Murchison’s collection in relation to what is known of his life and career.
Roderick Maingy Murchison 1830-1873 – Hugh Pagan
BNS Research Blog 
In my remarks on Capt.Murchison I mentioned that I had failed to discover where he was educated. It still seems probable to me that he was educated at some English public school, but I have now noticed that he subsequently attended the short-lived College for Civil Engineers, at Putney in South London, and that on leaving this he served for a year in 1847-8 as a junior employee of the Geological Survey of Great Britain. In this we can see the guiding hand of his formidable uncle, Sir Roderick Murchison, but it is clear that he did not settle to a career in this area, and that the short-term solution, as it was for many younger sons in the mid Victorian era, was that he should take up a commission in the Army.
I have also noticed that in Time and Chance the Story of Arthur Evans and his Forebears, 1943, p.96, the book’s author, Joan Evans, Sir Arthur Evans’s sister and the daughter of Sir John Evans, the dominant figure in the British numismatic scene during the second half of the nineteenth century, mentions, in the context of a letter written to Sir John Evans in June 1858 by his friend Jonathan Rashleigh, that at that time “their chief rival was Captain Roderick Murchison”. As reported by Joan Evans, Murchison is described, whether in Rashleigh’s letter of this date or in a later letter, as “determined to buy at all hazards and at any price, all coins which have names not in his private catalogue. Until he has grown his wild oats among the the coin dealers and at Sotheby’s no sane person has a chance. Those who compete with him and only bid one less, but don’t get, are of course quite sane”. As recorded in my earlier remarks, June 1858 was the month in which Murchison made major purchases via Cureton at the sale of the Rev.T.F.Dymock’s collection, and if the passage quoted belongs to a letter of that month, it testifies to the impact that these purchases had on other contemporary collectors.