Allgoldcoins

Thank you all for your help, I will give it a go..

I have decided to submit some modern silver proof and a couple of gold proofs for NGC grading. I have joined up and got the forms, but I am pretty confused on how to fill them in, or what needs returning etc? Can I send coins in for grading in their original Royal Mint capsules, as I can't even make that out? Any help or if anyone has a similar completed form they could upload I would be very grateful. And I am submitting from the UK via the London office. Thanks

I don't see why not, it looks to be a decent MS grade - Victoria has all her hair which is not seen unless its a good coin, I guess it looks rather nice hen you turn it at an angle?

The coin looks genuine and in very nice condition, i certainly would not be going anywhere near it with a gold testing kit. A good pair of scales for coins : https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/1317187511

I think the answer is the same as it is for buying any coin as investment/collecting, if there are millions of these things and if they are all the same such as a krugerrand. where the design stays the same and there are no particular rare years, then it has no collector value at all, its just a piece of bullion. The same is true of the Britannia's and Eagles, nothing much changes, however the Royal Mint have hit upon the idea of producing limited edition bullion coins. This means with the QB you have now 11 different designs to collect, you can't just go to the mint and buy any one you like as they have sold out of most of them, hence the secondary market and people prepared to pay just a little more for say The Lion of England etc to complete the rather nice set. The situation with the CP's is that they feature a cuddly Panda, the design changes each year and they appear as proof like, again these features make them collectable as well as just a bullion coin. You will struggle to find every year back to the 80's. so again the prices go up.

My advice to anyone who simply wants to hold gold at the cheapest possible premium, is to buy Krugerrands. If you are buying sovereigns and want the best value for money, then I suggest you buy good grade sovereigns that would grade MS ?? on the Sheldon Scale. Yes that means quite a hefty premium compared to low grade coins, but the bonus is that in my experience a good (Victoria / Ed / Geo) sovereign will hold its numismatic value even when gold itself drops. I think you have to be careful buying neither at rates close to BV or close to MS, a VF (AU58) 1911 London Sovereign will only ever be worth BV, but a nice MS-64 should hold its value. I know this thread is about sovereigns, but just to mention, the Chinese Panda and now the BU Queens Beasts, are well worth the extra premiums.

Hi Its not what is called a variety, the striking is simply poor as it was on many of the Shield sovereign legends, I have shown your coin in negative below and a 1880s Shield sovereign which has an inverted 'A' in Victoria instead of 'V' In general you are looking for either a wrong digit or numeral being used, this is most often seen with a correction such as the correct digit or numeral being struck on top of the incorrect one. The 1880S is quite rare as there was no attempt to fix the error, so one can assume the mint completely missed the error.

Its a fake I am afraid.

How anyone can say sovereigns are boring is beyond me, aren't these some of the most lovely coins every struck ??

I wanted to come back on this Sunday but the forum was down, so first of all thank you for your nice comments, you certainly could have waited but the articles did contain a little more in the way of figures and tables. I am self taught in the history of the sovereign, I had no idea what any of the official terms of abbreviations meant when I started out, so the articles are written for anyone without previous knowledge to learn the basics about my favorite coin - The Sovereign. Thank you again..