Sovereign Errors, Overdates and Varieties

[drakesterling]

Hi @DrK can we see images of the entire coin? The short and long tails coins wear differently, and can often be identified by the way the wear presents on the dragon.

 

Various medium tails are known/alleged to exist and have been described in past editions of the McDonald catalogue. If you can find a copy of one, you can check there if they haven't already been described? I'll check when I'm back in the office next week too.

 

The decision was made to not specifically describe medium tails as new varieties, as it was unclear whether the medium tail was a different die or simply one where the shallow incused tips of the tail had been filled in the die.

[DrK]

On 19/03/2023 at 03:59, drakesterling said:

Hi @DrK can we see images of the entire coin? The short and long tails coins wear differently, and can often be identified by the way the wear presents on the dragon.

 

Various medium tails are known/alleged to exist and have been described in past editions of the McDonald catalogue. If you can find a copy of one, you can check there if they haven't already been described? I'll check when I'm back in the office next week too.

 

The decision was made to not specifically describe medium tails as new varieties, as it was unclear whether the medium tail was a different die or simply one where the shallow incused tips of the tail had been filled in the die.

Hi drakesterling,

   I can appreciate what you are saying.  While I was looking through hundreds of horse derrières I saw many instances where there appeared to be weak ghosts of the ends of the tails, most especially the innermost longest one of the three.  If there was any doubt whatsoever about the tail ends, I ignored that example.  For the examples I did accept, I also looked for another telltale clue, which is the number of hair spurs in the left-indent of the tail.  It's been pointed out by others that for short, medium, and long tails there are two, zero, and one spurs respectively.  So if I saw what appeared to be a medium tail but could see even some weak evidence of a hair spur in the indent, I ignored that case and assumed the ends of the tail had filled or just been weakly struck.  In the end, I only considered cases where all three ends of the horse tail were cut short, a horizontal line drawn under them intersected the vertex of the angle between the bottom of the horse leg and the dragon leg, and there was no evidence of any hair spur in the left indent.  I also avoided any seriously worn coins. This was about as strict as I could make it.  Even still, I was able to find a few cases of each variety.  All four of the new ones that I showed thus would correspond to a medium (or intermediate) tail length. None would be considered short.  But based on just appearance alone, none would be considered long either. 

If the decision was made not to include medium tails as new varieties in the Jubilee Head series, then how do you explain Marsh-101A, 102A, 103, 104, and 104A for type IIB St George reverse?  This is where the "no hair spur" argument initiated I think.  

But, of course, just because we don't see something doesn't mean it never was there.  As a former chemistry professor, I've run into way too many cases where the fact that something was not seen was not proof that it was not there. It just may have been missed in the measurement. It's a classic case of  Evidence of absence - Wikipedia   where it's easy to prove something exists, but nearly impossible to prove that it doesn't.  In the current case, a worn or partially filled die, or simply a weak strike could have resulted in what I found.  But I felt that the absence of the tips of all three tail ends, as well as the hair spur in the indent, on an otherwise well-struck coin, put the weight of evidence in my favor, as much as could be reasonably expected. 

Even if the examples I found are due to die wear on formerly long tails, it would not be out of the question to still consider them significant varieties since other such examples are already included in Marsh.  For example, Marsh-111 indicates that the final stop in B.P. is missing, but I personally own a coin where it is plainly there.  When compiling the book, the authors simply had never seen one before and therefore assumed all coins were the same.  And Marsh-40A relates to partially barred A's. But clearly no engraver would ever create such a letter punch, so it's obviously due to a worn die or letter punch, but still considered a significant variety. When I see a case of "inverted A for V", I believe it. But when I see a case of "unbarred A", I'm skeptical that this is simply a filled die and not an inverted letter V.  And there are several varieties which relate to missing B.P. initials altogether. I've always been of the opinion that most of these were simply cases of worn dies or weak strikes.  

Since this is a forum designed to get to the truth of interesting things, your separate investigations are definitely welcome, and I'd love to see images of what you're describing so that I can improve my own detective work.  Instead of showing images here, let me give everyone the certification numbers of the coins I showed, so you can download them and enlarge to whatever degree you like:

1892 PCGS 32464080

1892-M NGC 4628806-011 (AU55)

1892-S The Coin Cabinet Auction 28, Lot 226

1893-M PCGS 42926379

And no, I did not "photoshop" any of the images!  

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I'm always on the lookout for unusual variations in gold sovereigns, and I will show one of my favorites here, since it relates to having parts of the design missing.  Here is an 1863 Sydney sov, where the bottoms of the letters E, E, G are clearly broken.  But these are very thick sections, and not some fine delicate lines, so it hardly seems like die wear. And why were the bottoms of just these letters affected, and not the S, O, V, etc?  If the letter punches themselves broke, why did the tops not break and disappear also?  And once defective punch for letter E was noticed, why not use the same punch that created the E in "ONE" since it was still intact? (You will note by the angles and lengths of the serifs that three different letter punches for E were in use.)  It's usually clear what's going on in the case of broken or repositioned letters, or re-punched dates, but this one baffles me.  I really wish I could talk to the engraver that produced this coin to see what he was thinking at the time. 🧐

 

Edited March 21, 2023 by DrK

[Booky586]

11 hours ago, DrK said:

Here is an 1863 Sydney sov, where the bottoms of the letters E, E, G are clearly broken.

Rather than broken, could the damage be caused by debris filling in the thinner parts of the letters on the die, a little like the unbarred A varieties?

The letter N seems to be suffering some loss in the lower serif too.

[Allgoldcoins]

On 19/03/2023 at 08:59, drakesterling said:

Hi @DrK can we see images of the entire coin? The short and long tails coins wear differently, and can often be identified by the way the wear presents on the dragon.

 

Various medium tails are known/alleged to exist and have been described in past editions of the McDonald catalogue. If you can find a copy of one, you can check there if they haven't already been described? I'll check when I'm back in the office next week too.

 

The decision was made to not specifically describe medium tails as new varieties, as it was unclear whether the medium tail was a different die or simply one where the shallow incused tips of the tail had been filled in the die.

I did some early work on tails many years ago, so these images are not the best, but do show all 3 tail lengths and you can see they terminate differently. I hope it helps:

 

[DrK]

3 hours ago, Booky586 said:

Rather than broken, could the damage be caused by debris filling in the thinner parts of the letters on the die, a little like the unbarred A varieties?

The letter N seems to be suffering some loss in the lower serif too.

At first I thought the same way you do.  Since these areas are so thick, and nothing nearby is compromised, can't be due to die wear.  But plugged die doesn't seem to be the answer, since it would be amazing coincidence to hit the exact same point on both letters E. Also, the width of the break looks to be almost identical on each letter, which would also be quite a coincidence (but not impossible). There are equally thin sections of several other letters, including top of E, which are still intact, and the location being near the rim (which might get a bit more force) doesn't seem to be a factor since the bottom of the letters S and possibly O would have been expected to be hit also.  This area of the letter is so thick and heavy, much more so than the delicate crossbar of letter A, that I would have expected just a partial filling of the die, which would make this area thinner and lighter but not altogether missing as if it never existed. 

I see your point on the lower part of letter N, although this letter looks to be a much shabbier job of engraving than the N in "ONE" so it's hard to say for sure.  My best guess still is that the letter punches themselves broke somehow.  Perhaps they had low quality brittle steel in use?  I doubt that all three letter punches broke at the exact same time, so I would have thought that as soon as one was seen to be defective, they would have immediately started creating a replacement for it.  I'm not sure how long that process took back then.  And I still don't understand why they wouldn't use the other intact E punch while waiting for the replacements to be ready. Like so many other strange features on very old sovereigns, I guess we'll never really know. 

[DrK]

3 hours ago, Allgoldcoins said:

I did some early work on tails many years ago, so these images are not the best, but do show all 3 tail lengths and you can see they terminate differently. I hope it helps:

 

One excellent marker for "short" tail, which Steve Hill reminded me of, is the simultaneous presence of two spurs of hair in the left tail indent, which I show here on some random 1890-S sov. So it would seem that if you run into a sov that does not appear to have a long tail, and doesn't have these two extra hairs, then it's most likely a medium tail, or as drakesterling suggests a case of long tail where all of the fine details of the ends of the tail got lost in a worn die.  

[Spyder]

Would some of you sharp eyes members agree that this is a 8 over 7. 

[JamesH]

2 hours ago, Spyder said:

Would some of you sharp eyes members agree that this is a 8 over 7. 

Does look like it though difficult with the glare/light. Any other pics?

[Spyder]

I think this makes it clearer. The upside down photo makes it more obvious that it is a 8 struck over a 7. This might be a good idea for others to take some photos of coin upside down as you can see details that were not noticed before.

[JamesH]

12 minutes ago, Spyder said:

I think this makes it clearer. The upside down photo makes it more obvious that it is a 8 struck over a 7. This might be a good idea for others to take some photos of coin upside down as you can see details that were not noticed before.

Yep, sure does 👍🏼

[Booky586]

4 hours ago, Spyder said:

I think this makes it clearer. The upside down photo makes it more obvious that it is a 8 struck over a 7. This might be a good idea for others to take some photos of coin upside down as you can see details that were not noticed before.

There's some interesting info as to how this error may have come about in the Bentley Collection sale catalogue: https://media.baldwin.co.uk/auctions/Baldwins Auction/BA catalogues/Baldwins auction 79 - catalogue (Bentley Collection 3).pdf

[Spyder]

3 minutes ago, Booky586 said:

There's some interesting info as to how this error may have come about in the Bentley Collection sale catalogue: https://media.baldwin.co.uk/auctions/Baldwins Auction/BA catalogues/Baldwins auction 79 - catalogue (Bentley Collection 3).pdf

Thank you @Booky586 that is very interesting

[dicker]

Yes it is an 8 / 7

[Spyder]

6 minutes ago, dicker said:

Yes it is an 8 / 7

Initially when I bought this coin, it was because this was what I thought, but after seeing it in hand was not so sure. I had put this up for sale and no one noticed for about a week until and I have to thank @1stsovereign said he thinks it might be. After doing these extra photos, the proof was obvious. 

[DrK]

On 23/03/2023 at 07:25, Spyder said:

Would some of you sharp eyes members agree that this is a 8 over 7. 

Marsh/Hill 2021 lists three separate varieties for 1880/70, depending on the degree of exposure of the initials W.W. on the obverse, and the length of the horse tail on the reverse:

M91A = WW buried, long tail

M91BB = WW buried, short tail

M91DD = WW clear, long tail

I own an example of M91DD, and will show the relevant details below.  

Your coin looks to have long tail, so it's either M91A or M91DD.  On your coin, the top bar of the "7" is very obvious, whereas on mine it's mostly hidden except for a piece peeking out in the northeast corner. On my coin, there is a clear section of the bottom of the "7" sticking out (circled in red), which is not very obvious on your coin. So it would seem that when the engraver overlaid the "8" on the die used to strike your coin, it was positioned a bit lower than on the die used to strike my coin. So I would guess that your coin will show WW partially buried, and will be M91A.  🤔

[drakesterling]

On 21/03/2023 at 21:15, DrK said:

If the decision was made not to include medium tails as new varieties in the Jubilee Head series, then how do you explain Marsh-101A, 102A, 103, 104, and 104A for type IIB St George reverse?  This is where the "no hair spur" argument initiated I think.  

Quick reply: The decision was made by David Iverson and Steve Hill during the initial publication of their Jubilee pamphlets. You mentioned that Steve Hill would include your discoveries in future publications, so it seems his position on the medium tails has changed. In any case, I defer to Steve Hill and David Iverson's views, as they are the academics who have done the hard work and research. 

[iacabu]

New to this thread and I haven't had chance yet to go through every page.

Is this a mis-strike? 1887 coin

Edited April 6, 2023 by iacabu

[dicker]

Counterfeit

[iacabu]

6 minutes ago, dicker said:

Counterfeit

Makes sense now you say it. I haven't got it in hand, someone had sent me the pictures. 

[dicker]

1 minute ago, iacabu said:

Makes sense now you say it. I haven't got it in hand, someone had sent me the pictures. 

Don’t touch it.  

[paulmerton]

The worn letters made me think it was a chocolate coin!

[GoldDiggerDave]

I'm with @dicker even if the legend was not worn its all wrong and whats happened to the medal on her shoulder?  First one is a real one.

[James32]

2 minutes ago, GoldDiggerDave said:

I'm with @dicker even if the legend was not worn its all wrong and whats happened to the medal on her shoulder?  First one is a real one.

Ear looks all kinds of weird also.

[iacabu]

I think that's settled it, thanks everyone. 

[SeverinDigsSovereigns]

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a variety. On some matt proof 1902 £5 there are raised lumps on the King's head and below "GR" of "GRA:", and an arc between them. I reckon this is due to some knock on the dies, and this feature is replicated on some coins of the type. I attached below a PF64 from PCGS website, circling those marks in green, my coin but taken by the dealer whom I bought from, and one currently listed on SVCollectors. 

P.S. please contact me if there is any copyright issue, and I shall delete the post.