Orpster

I lost a sovereign, assumed at the time I had not recorded one I had sold on my spreadsheet Found it months later when I moved my desk, it had fallen down the back

I was buying at peak, I buy whenever I have the money and something I want comes up for sale and nuts to the spot price

Would be looking for spot mate, so £455 right now Any less and I might as well just trade them in.

What sort of quantity of sovereigns are you after? I had considered cashing some out with Taxex this week so I may be able to help. Especially if you are anywhere near the midlands to collect or for me to deliver as Royal Mail have been terrible recently.

Look in the mirror mate, you have two mk1 eyeballs just above your nose @dicker means do your research, learn how to spot fakes just by looking at the coin under a loupe I have recently bought a digital microscope, and while I got it to be able to confirm any variants that pass through my hands it is a great piece of kit and it was not super expensive - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00XNYXQHE?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details The below is the type of detail it captures, on this example I was trying to confirm whether the A's in GRATIA on a young head were partially barred I have a couple of sets of scales but I find these the best - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0BHRTJ8QM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I also have these and they are adequate most of the time and are very portable https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08DNPPFPQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1 The second set only seem to be accurate to .1 but I have had them a long time

Is there a reason you have started to worry? There are fake sovereigns out there but they are thin on the ground and dealers will spot the majority that pass through their hands and they will just go in the melting pot A lot of new stackers get the same concern at some point or another, I did myself. These days I do not worry about it at all and I would not buy a sigma as I would rather spend the money on more gold. I do not buy US coins as they are faked quite widely. I also do not buy bars from places like the perth mint as again a lot of fakes. But every sovereign I know of that is a fake is still made of gold, and generally at least 21ct but sometimes up to 23ct gold. If you get a fake, just weight it in. You may lost a few quid but at the moment with stuff selling at spot the loss would be tiny. I weigh my coins on some scales that cost me £25 off Amazon, if you get some just make sure you can calibrate them. I buy older coins mostly so they can be slightly underweight but I know the tolerance and generally know roughly what a coin is going to come out to just based on the wear. I have some precision callipers too but rarely ever use them, I think maybe 3 times in the years I have had them. You can also do a gravity test with a jug of water and some scales for an extra check. Regarding ATS, they are reputable and can be reasonably priced. No dealer is infallible though, so always worth doing your own due diligence

Shields are a hard one to price at the minute I have to agree. For s while when spot was going mad the premiums dropped dramatically on them and you could get them at £10 over spot. I bought a couple of batches at £440/£450ish when spot was at £1850 but they seem to have dried up. Most sales posts on bookface seem to be for generic bullion and people shifting their secondary mint s**** or their battered rubbish. Or people with no sales history trying to sell the three sovereigns they own. Some of the dealers have not posted for ages, though a couple seem to be moving decent volumes or brits and generic sovereigns at or just under spot.

Majority of my stuff is in storage and I will not be going there for a while, and I am not really looking to sell any of my better shields anyway - if anything I am still looking to acquire while premiums on shields are so low

Welcome aboard @evamax, maybe consider a trial silver membership so you can see sales posts as they go up, rather than having to wait 3 days

Happens to everyone James, I am sure its just stress

1914 Nineteen Fourteen, if its a year One thousand nine hundred and four, if its a number, would rhyme then One nine one four, if its part of a telephone number, maybe, at a push

This picture instantly made me think of: Carry on, GLWS

I do indeed, and if anyone fancies a read you can view the HMRC Guidelines on coinage and banknotes here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7a34deed915d1fb3cd633a/guidance_coinage_banknotes.pdf Under 'The Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981', which specifically mentions sovereigns as a 'protected coin' to be included with circulating currency under the act. Its kind of grey if it is illegal to own them, or even sell them unless you believe the buyer may try and pass them as genuine, but better to err on the side of caution I suppose. I suspect selling them as fakes, or replica's, may be, in a very technical sense, be legal and personally I think they are a part of the history of sovereigns as much as variants and mint errors are.

I think you are right mate, one glance and the date looks wrong, did not even bother looking at anything else after that I would not buy it in your shoes even if it is 'worth its weight in gold'. They are illegal to buy, sell and own.

I would never buy a 0.5g coin, I do not see a point in them, I would buy 1g bullion as there is a definite market for it on the flip side, in bar as preference, and would pay up to 15% as a premium as that would be the sort of premium I would see when I sold. There are people who would pay more if a piece has a collectors appeal or are rare or vintage but for 1g gold the bars seem to do far better than any proof coin which as James has said will bomb 99.9999999% of the time if they are not from a national mint, I avoid anything of that size only because of the space carded 1g bars take up in a safety deposit box. But were I holding at home and space was not a challenge I think its not a bad way to stack as fractional is likely the future

I have a small safe at home for anything I have recently bought or I am looking to sell but I generally use a safety deposit box that costs me £230 a year (the normal price is £285 but I signed up for an offer when I upgraded the size of the box) plus I pay a bit extra for higher insurance. I used to have specific insurance for my coins through highworth insurance but have rolled it into my house insurance for the past couple of years as I keep very little at home and only for short periods, the specific coin insurance cost me circa £120 a year and it adds about £40 to my normal contents insurance now. It does cut down on the choice of insurers as some will not cover coin collections or that sort of value in gold. I have not found it hard to sell gold recently, I have sold around 5oz's during the recent spike, 3oz on the forum and 10 sovereigns directly to a dealer. I have also sold a couple of graded premium pieces to collectors and used all the funds to buy gold that has not really been impacted by the spike because of the lower premiums on some items. I have sold considerable (for me) amounts of gold on two occasions in the last decade (I use gold to store money and do not really see it as an investment) so I never really worry about selling having done it. If your cheaper than the next guy, even if only slightly, and your price is fair in the prevailing market then it sells.