Stuntman

Even the quintuple BU matte coin may not fully do it justice. I think the matte finish makes the detail and contrast quite hard to see. I'd love to see a quintuple proof memorial sov in hand, to see if that really made the design pop. Basically, the memorial is a lovely but very busy design which is hard to show off. The bullion double sovereign is perhaps the sweet spot in terms of size vs quality vs price in my opinion for this design.

3 Brits, or however many sovereigns £5000 will buy. Low premiums on the way in, high percentage of spot on the way out. Trusted and recognisable coins, whether selling privately or to a dealer. Personally I think platinum is the best value of the three main PMs at the moment, but in terms of maximising your return on physical bullion, I wouldn't buy either platinum or silver. So how about - a physical Brit and a couple of sovereigns, and then split the remainder equally between a platinum ETF and a silver ETF?

I really don't see the appeal of uniface error coins but I appreciate that some people might really want these. The mule coin is interesting, I can see the appeal of that one, but the price is such that I would never consider purchasing!

I wouldn't even go that high. F at best for me, and I wouldn't quibble with NF - especially for the obverse.

AU58, PF69, PF69, PF70 would be my guesses.

Thank goodness the coins are not made of Fe, otherwise they truly would be Ironic 😉

If you're stacking bullion rather than collecting it, base your exit strategy on selling it all to a dealer. Then anything you get above that via other routes is a bonus. Dealers can, and will, buy huge amounts of gold in one go. I doubt that even (say) Abyss's stack would make (say) Chards or Atkinsons think twice about buying it all in one go. So I'd say buy and stack what you like, whether it's 1oz coins, sovereigns or whatever. Minimise your premium over spot on the way in.

Cheers @paulmerton 🙂 I think the design looks pretty good in bullion and I'll almost certainly be adding one to my collection.

@danieldorkins - with a percentage split like that I would perhaps be tempted to liquidate some of your graded sets if and when the market for the particular sets is strong. Or if adding to your stash, up the bullion percentage. But you've got a nice diverse mix going on there, which could prove pretty smart if the market for the graded sets moves in your favour. It's probably more risky than bullion though. My own physical stash is about 5% silver, 10% platinum, 10% gold brilliant uncirculated and 75% gold bullion. My precious metals ETFs are currently about 35% gold, 35% silver and 30% platinum.

As someone who is likely to stop working later this year, I'm building a bit of a cash pot which is currently generating about 5% interest until I can start drawing down on my pension. This is spread across various banking groups so that I have diversified the risk. Not that I have a vast amount of cash, but just good practice to spread the risk. I need to make sure I've got at least a year of living expenses in cash (preferably three years) until gold goes to the moon 😉

All being well, and depending on my subjective view of the quality of coin designs released in 2024: 3 or 4 1oz UK gold bullion coins, and maybe a 2024 double sovereign (but probably not). Maybe 1 or 2 UK platinum bullion coins for the collection, rather than for investment. Probably no silver. If the gold spot price drops significantly, then maybe some 2024 bullion sovereigns, to sell in future. If the gold spot price rises significantly I will sell some or all of the duplicate items I have and maybe some ETF units.

It's really hard to know what's the best decision to make regarding those very rare coins that you want, when they come to the market, as 'show me another' rarely applies... As long as you're happy with your purchase decision at the time you make it, then well done. I hope you get great pleasure from its ownership 🙂 Good luck to all those contemplating purchase of any such rare/expensive coins!

I agree that the 1887 £2 looks like a circulation coin rather than a proof. I'd say it's AU58 on a bad day, maybe MS60 or MS61 on a good day. Maybe @GoldDiggerDave might advise on the likely grade, and whether his conservation services might be able to help with the abrasions/hairlines in the obverse and reverse fields?

I wonder if the reason that 1937 sovereigns/sets appear on the market frequently is that they tend to be bought by collectors at or near the end of their collecting journey, due to the cost. I have read that this is the case for the 1934 crown, it's one of the last coins that a serious predecimal collector with deep pockets might buy. Because of that, the average age of these collectors is likely to be quite high, which is why these coins might appear fairly frequently on the open market as and when their collections are liquidated. I'm just glad that I don't really want to own coins like these!

If I was to collect these - I think the Magna Carta £2 coin from 2015 would look pretty good in gold proof if it can be found for a low premium. I'd think of it as a cut price 1989 double sov... And I think the 2015 Britannia (definitive) £2 coin would fit well into a collection of gold coins too. As for the 50p gold proofs, perhaps the 50th anniversary of decimalisation coin would be a nice first choice.

Definitely not to be treated as a bullion investment in my opinion unless you can buy them for at or near bullion prices. I too think it's disingenuous to call them double sovereigns as they are clearly not based on the sovereign. They are £2 gold coins but not double sovereigns. Perhaps see if you can buy your favourite design(s) in gold proof, but treat it as an indulgence rather than a core element of your stack/collection. I doubt any of them are particularly sought-after on the secondary market so you may well be able to pick up a nice-looking lump of gold for a relatively small premium. I certainly wouldn't look to buy any such coins on initial release unless I really, really, wanted to own that particular design.

If you buy coins that you like, then you will have pleasure of ownership even if they may not give you an outstanding financial return. Case in point: I have some brilliant uncirculated five-sovereign pieces (bought new on release, ungraded, in their original RM packaging). If these do well in future years, it's a bonus. But I'll probably keep them all for a very long time and only sell if I really needed to. One of them in particular would probably be the very last gold coin I would part with!

This website is useful for checking which dates are more valuable for each denomination: https://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk/values/ Assuming all the coins are 1920-1946 (50% silver) the only dates you really need to look for are 1923 (sixpence only), 1924, 1925, 1926, 1930 (halfcrown only), 1932 (florin only). Pre-1920 is sterling silver, so worth more as scrap. But check if you have any 1891 or 1892 florins, 1903, 1904 or 1905 halfcrowns, or 1905 shillings and florins. If you have anything earlier than Jubilee Head Victoria (pre 1887), check to see how scarce it is before you scrap it.

Sticking with bullion keeps things simple, which has plenty to recommend it. Another factor to consider is whether you prefer to keep your coins raw (and/or in original packaging if they are proof or brilliant uncirculated) or house them in slabs. If you're happy owning them in slabs then having a few graded coins for diversity, as @Orpster says above, makes sense. But it's a subtly different market and you'll need to think about your exit strategy and be careful not to overpay on the way in (or be prepared to hold for quite a while). Acquire as much knowledge as you can about which coins are likely to be in demand in the future, and then balance that with how much you are comfortable to invest. For example, there have been a lot of very nice Royal Mint gold coins released in the last two years, some of these will continue to do better than others in my opinion, but there are still some value propositions out there at today's prices I think. I imagine that it's easy to get into quite deep waters fairly quickly, so go in with your eyes open. See my first sentence above!

How much does a 1989 set go for at the moment? I'd rather have that set than a 1937 set, purely from an aesthetic point of view 🙂

In my opinion - it's one for the serious sovereign collectors who want an example of every monarch, and there probably isn't all that much upside/profit potential compared to putting the same money into other gold coins if you were to buy the 1937 at current prices. I think it may have been worth buying 10-15 years ago (because then it was perhaps underappreciated by the collecting market), but personally I think it's now a very expensive coin that will stay very expensive, but because there were 5501 minted the price won't rise more than normal since it isn't particularly hard to find. Hopefully that makes some kind of sense, although it's just my opinion and I'm not in the market for this coin. I'd probably look for one or more nice bullion examples of George III, George IV (shield reverse) or William IV coins if I wanted to invest that sort of money in sovereigns. Personally I think these designs are more interesting

If you are primarily a collector rather than a stacker, then design is often very important indeed in determining which new coins/bars you choose to buy - especially on a relatively limited budget. Design, production quality, popularity and rarity are probably the most important factors for collectors, with the order of those factors changing according to personal preference/exit strategy. Back on topic: I will always collect a post-2000 bullion sovereign if it has a special obverse or reverse, but from now onwards I probably wouldn't buy a 'standard' KCIII sovereign (such as the 2024 coin) unless they changed the alloy composition. My collector money would go towards any new 1oz gold bullion coins I liked. However, If they did mess with the other specifications of the sovereign (size, weight, shape etc) I'd almost certainly buy one for the collection. But it would be a very bad decision from the RM in my opinion.

I didn't get the survey email, but let's hope that the vast majority of those people who complete the survey vote for a return to yellow gold. I'd certainly be keener to buy modern bullion sovereigns and double sovereigns that looked like the pre-2000 coins did. Beyond that, the RM would be mad to mess with the specifications of the sovereign - whether size, shape, purity, weight, main metal content...

The 2022 Memorial five sovereign piece finally turned up in March, after ordering it in November I think it was... Bought bullion versions of the Memorial sov and double sov. Bought bullion versions of the Coronation sov and double sov. Bought 1oz gold bullion Coronation Cypher coin, Coronation Britannia coin, and Coronation bar. That was it for 2023, and I'm happy with those additions 🙂

I'm not especially impressed with any of them. The Olympics/Paralympics 50p reminds me a bit of the Rwanda Lunar coins. I'll look for the 50p coins if they release them as circulating currency coins but otherwise I'm not particularly interested. Shame, really. Some of the previous commemorative designs have been very good, especially some of the £2 coins.