LawrenceChard

Although I get to see quite a few fake sovereigns, I have never before seen what look like 45 fakes in just two photos, and from one auction or other source. Were these photos from the auction catalogue? I agree they do all look like fakes. Bigger, better, hi-res photos would help, as some of the dates or mintmark areas are not clear. 1916-M is a scarce date / mintmark combination, so it would be surprising to see so many in one batch, although by coincidence, last Friday I tested one incoming fake sovereign, which was also a 1916-M. If one is actually a 1919-L, then that is definitely a fake, as otherwise it is a non-existent date / mintmark combination. As @ArgentSmith asked "where were they being auctioned?". Do you have a name, lot numbers, links? I guess this was a Greek auction? The big variation in colour should alert anyone. They all / mainly have a weakly struck appearance. Some have what look like mould "flash lines" on them. Thanks for posting these photos, it should be a good educational resource. 🙂

Yes, it was the unrefined gold which was tough, but Ansell had found a method of refining it further, I think by annealing and pickling (I need to find time to re-read "The Royal Mint" by Ansell). Like the gold, it is quite a tough read. The main point being that the finished coins themselves were not tough. My understanding of some of this may be wrong, so please feel free to correct me if you know better. My Ansell book is a facsimile copy, the print is quite small, and the illustrations are even worse. It would be handy to get a good quality OCR version of it, which would make it much easier to read, particularly as it would be easier to search it, and also read it in a larger and clearer font.

I don't have a great memory for dates, numbers, facts, or anything else which needs memorising. I am better at understanding things, and can remember events which follow a logical sequence or chain of events. Our detailed stock records don't go back so far either. I do seem to recall photographing 2 of the 827 sovereigns, but don't think we have ever owned any, unlike Ansells, of which we have owned a number, perhaps 4. I think we may have bought another one a few days ago. Some of the Marsh rarity ratings are based on higher grade coins, and downplay lower grades. 1899-P are not rare in low grades, but higher grades are scarcer. I remember a TSF discussion about some of the "C" rarities being changed, but don't remember why. Sorry if this doesn't help much. 🙂

Just don't have any boating accidents. 😎

I hope you don't have a boating accident. 😎

If the milk was "gold top", I hope it was ethically sourced. 😎

Sleeping tablets probably aren't a good long term solution. Exercise, stretching, meditation, are almost certainly better. Melatonin is probably OK, but I don't think it can be easily obtained in the UK. In any case meditation beats medication. 😎

Yes, but we tend to try and keep quiet about them. At least they play on green grass (I think). 😎

I wonder if "Barry" realises or cares that he keeps getting extended "bad press"? A few months ago, I thought about creating a blog and TSF post about 2022 proof sovereigns, and pricing. I did contribute a few scattered comments, but was too busy (mainly skiing) to develop a thorough article about it. It would also have involved considering the differences between dealers, retailers, and distributors. If we consider pure dealers who only deal in secondary market coins. The main function here is to make a market between buyers and sellers, while making a profit for the dealer. Dealers need to be guided by market factors as supply, demand, and market prices. No dealer can successfully ignore these factors and hope to stay in business. Don't blame such dealers for their pricing decisions. You can choose to buy or not, sell or not. You are not forced to deal with him, but if you have an opinion of the dealer, whether good or bad, you are entiled to it. Some coin businesses are not real dealers, they are only coin marketing companies, or retailers. they are entitled to exist, but I would prefer it if some of them were not around, and many of them would not be missed greatly. Of course, some traditional coin dealers also act as marketeers, retailers, or distributors. Our company has managed to combine secondary market trading and new issue distribution, with reasonable success, since about 2000. Most years since 2000, one new issue product category we have actively embraced have been each year's proof sovereign issues. Typically, we would contract to buy several hundred proof sovereigns each year, often about 500 pieces, although in 2005, we committed to 650 pieces, out of an issue limit of (from memory) 5,000. In most years, we have offered pre-release or early bird discounts, often as much as 10% discount. I strongly suspect the Royal Mint disliked us discounting them, but that's probably another story. There are at least two good reasons here. One, I think regular buyers, and sovereign collectors, are entitled to competitive prices. Secondly, we don't want to hold big stocks all year, so we used to try to sell at least half in the first month. If we expect the puble to buy from a small provincial dealer instead of the Royal Mint, we need to give them good reasons for doing so. We know that demand for proof sovereigns does not all happen in the first month, so we like to be able to stock and offer them all year, at least until the next year comes out. It costs money to hold extra stock, for after a few months, we switch to thinking about market prices. Some years, we have beens tuck with surplus stocks, and have had to discount them to reduce our inventory levels. Other years, we have increased prices to try and control our sales, and avoid a complete early sellout. I believe this creates a fair rationing system. When there is a "special" year, lots of other non-dealers jump onto the market, and it is a struggle for us to get sufficient allocation to be satisfy our normal demand. For the 2022 issue, we bought our coins from a number of different distributors, paying different prices, and with different delivery dates. We allocated a proportion of our first batch for regular customers at a small discount compared with the RM issue price, even though we could easily have sold them all at RM issue or more. If we had been given a free choice, we would have been happy to buy 1,000 pieces, and to offer the first 500 at a discount. Subsequent batches we priced according to market factors. I think that it fair, reasonable, ethical, and practical. The first batch we sold were at lower prices than we had already contracted to pay for some of our later deliveries. Some might think that was stupid of us, and they could be right! 🙂 I know you specifically mentioned the SOTD soveriegns, but similar principles applied. Lastly, there are a few recent RM issues we would happily sell at less than our cost.

I completely agree about modern (and all other) slavery. Also it is not just children who are affected. Mistakes on our website: We do offer a "Win a Pint" prize, even it is only a typo, grammatical, factual, or logical error. (Excludes my TSF typos). Any relevant P.M.s would be welcome, especially if you copy @ChardsCoinandBullionDealer in to the conversation, which save me doing it. I agree with the suggestion to take a screenshot of the error, and you are more than welcome to post it here or elsewhere, preferably after we have had chance to fix it. 😎

That might be a source of potential conflict in parts of Ireland. Green versus orange! 😎

If you are unsure whether an advertised deal is an error, either go ahead and buy, or contact the company to check before buying. At worst, the business could reject your offer, or cancel your attempted purchase. In borderline case, the business might consider retaining your goodwill worth a small loss of profit. If banks, after much careful thought, chose to offer interest free credit on monthly cleared balances, why should consumers be worried about it? In earlier times, when banks and card companies charged merchants up to 7.5% fees and commissions, then paying by credit card created extra costs for businesses, who mainly passed them on to the "average" consumer. Under legal regimes where merchants were not permitted to charge differential amounts to cash or card customers, this handed an unfair monopolistic advantage to card companies at the expense of both consumers and merchants. This abuse has largely been reduced or eliminated by caps on interchange and other fees.

This is an interesting question, and I like the list of alternatives. I have always tried to run our business on fair, honest and ethical lines. We would never knowingly mislead a customer, whether a buyer or seller. My expectation is that most people would appreciate this approach, and reciprocate where appropriate. Most of the time, this works. Only a very small proportion of our customers ever try to take unfair advantage. On the small number of occasions where someone does try to take unfair advantage of something, I make a mental note, because I have learnt something about that person. If on the other hand, someone goes out of their way to help us with something, again I would want to make a mental note. I regard business as two way. Legally, if one party to a contract is aware the other party is mistaken about a key part ot the contract, then it is not enforceable. A simplied example might be that if someone agreed to buy 1,000 gold sovereigns from us thinking they were one ounce gold coins, then we would be aware, of should be aware, of their misunderstanding. Good practice would be to alert the buyer to the facts. Because we are aware that human error can cause great problems if data is incorrectly input into automated systems, we do have some price checking routines, and page 5398 of out T&Cs does include a disclaimer. 🙂 If all parties act ethically, then nobody should lose any sleep, so everyone benefits. @stefffana's question seems to demonstrate that he is one of the ethical good guys, and I liked @Gordy's answer too. Most members on TSF do seem to be decent people, despite the wide variety of different opinions on many topics. I wish could say the same for Facebook and other social media platforms. Some credit is undoubtedly due here to TSF Moderators. The question reminds me of a funny story I was told years ago. A partner in a menswear shop was just about to close when a gent dashed in and wanted to buy a £20 silk tie. In his rush, he handed over two £20 notes by mistake, which the seller noticed just as the buyer was going out of the door. This posed an ethical problem for the seller. Should he tell his partner or not? On the question of child labour, I think many critics are too dogmatic and extreme. Sure, the Victorian English practice of sending small children up chimneys was unsound, but I used to accompany one or both of my parents to work from an early age, possibly as young as about 5 years old. I learnt much about work, life, and more from this early experience, and would recommend early work experience wherever and whenever practical and safe.

The OP hasn't logged back on since the bad news. I guess the OP quickly requested a refund off the ebay seller ! I doubt it, as he states "The coin is legit". On the other hand the ebay seller has probably "leggdit". It's a little disppointing that the OP has not said "thanks to you guys on TSF", but at least we learnt something from trying to help.

@Allison is obviously an expert numismatist, who can tell his coin is "legit", and has clearly realised that you lot are trying to plant seeds of doubt into his mind, probably in a cunning attempt to try and acquire an extremely rare, unlisted Van Allen & Mallis error. As this coin's provenance was from the world renowned ebay, it must be genuine. It's hardly surprising he has seen through the cunning ruse, and chosen not to share his knowledge and expertise with us. Still, we can't always expect to know (or Unknow) it all, can we?😎

Shouldn't this get moved to the "football" thread? 😎

Really? 😎

Looks like a Chinese fake to me, although some of the Chinese ones look better than this. Look at the grainy / greasy looking areas in the field and parts of the relief. A better photo, and an obverse photo might help. Even with the existing photo, there appear to be a number of raised pimples, which are always a bad sign. I think a few other TSF members have reached a similar conclusion. 😎

MotD? Mis-struck-on-the-Day! 😎

Anybody heard of: "Take the money" / "Open the box" ? 😎

Stay there, it's safer! 😎

Easy! Just make an extra 50% to cater for the returns. 😎

Arrived: It going to have to go back... It's upside down! 😎

69?

Platinum is currently at a very low, bargain price, at about 57% of the price of gold. Until about 2011, it was on a par, or a slight premium to gold. Although past prices are no guarantee of future prices, but are worth thinking about.