A Danish coin collection decreed to be kept off the market for a century brought in 14.8 million euros ($16.40 million) as it finally went under the hammer in Copenhagen on Saturday, the auction house told Danish media.

After an eight-hour auction in the Danish capital, news agency Ritzau reported that the 286 coins on sale had brought in 14,820,900 euros.

Michael Fornitz, director of the Danish branch of auction house Stack's Bowers, told the news agency the final sum exceeded estimates by around 25%.

The auction represented the first batch of coins sold from the some 20,000 coins contained in the Bruun collection – which has been kept off the market for a century.

In 1922, a Danish entrepreneur and coin expert, Lars Emil Bruun, bought the collection from the aristocratic Bille-Brahe family.

He died the following year, adding in his will a condition to the sale of the collection.

"The story goes that Bruun, after having seen the devastation of World War I, was very afraid that something would happen to the (museum's) national collection," Helle Horsnaes, head of Denmark's National Museum's coin and medallion collection, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in May.

"And therefore, he made a will, saying that his collection should be kept as a reserve for the national collection for 100 years after his death," she added.

Denmark's National Museum, which had been given first dibs in an agreement between Bruun and the Bille-Brahe family, paid 1 million euros for seven of the collection's coins earlier this year.