Disappearing 1oz gold Queen's Beasts?

[LawrenceChard]

4 minutes ago, TommyTwoShots said:

That’s an awful lot of completer coins for your personal collection mr chard. I suspect you would be able to build a London sized house with your gold collection? 😂

They don't occupy much space.

Is a "London sized house" a house the size of London, or a broom-cupboard size because that's the only size most Londoners can afford?

And I certainly don't keep them at home.

[KevinFlynn]

5 hours ago, TommyTwoShots said:

That’s an awful lot of completer coins for your personal collection mr chard. I suspect you would be able to build a London sized house with your gold collection? 😂

Him, who built a house out of gold... 🤗

[TommyTwoShots]

6 hours ago, LawrenceChard said:

They don't occupy much space.

Is a "London sized house" a house the size of London, or a broom-cupboard size because that's the only size most Londoners can afford?

And I certainly don't keep them at home.

A tiny house

[modofantasma]

On 16/07/2021 at 22:15, RDHC said:

I can't afford the 1oz coins, but I thought it be nice to keep an eye on them for the future, so I have been tracking their prices on several websites over the last few weeks. 

Comments anyone?

If I saw a qb priced the same as a brit I'd almost certainly take the qb especially one of the earlier designs. I don't personally want to risk paying the premium and backdating now though paying a few hundred quid over spot.  I did pick up a qb completer as it was about 7 quid more than a 2021 brit 

[RDHC]

4 hours ago, modofantasma said:

If I saw a qb priced the same as a brit I'd almost certainly take the qb especially one of the earlier designs. I don't personally want to risk paying the premium and backdating now though paying a few hundred quid over spot.  I did pick up a qb completer as it was about 7 quid more than a 2021 brit 

I think you did pretty well with your Completer. Unfortunately for both of us, the gap between a Beast and a Britannia has now opened up so much that in terms of sheer bullion value it will be years before it becomes worthwhile to buy a Beast as opposed to a Britannia, unless you go for one of the special Britannia issues, which seem to be quite expensive. (Actually, even on purely aesthetic grounds,  I prefer the standard issue, standing Britannia lady.)

[modofantasma]

Yeh I understand there's value to the pleasure of owning certain pieces also but I like to keep things simple 

[LawrenceChard]

On 07/09/2021 at 22:20, LawrenceChard said:

A partial failure:

This was intended to be a 10 x 10 grid of them.

We could have been lazy, just laid them on a flat surface, and taken one shot, but Doug likes to do things right, so he and a colleague set out to photograph 100 different coins individually, then add them, in Photoshop, to one single composite image.

Adobe Photoshop is quite resource hungry, and started metaphorically groaning and complaining as the file size grew, so Doug started reducing the file size as he went along, but this is as far as he got, before Adobe downed tools and went home sulking. Tomorrow he is going to try again. He will probably have to create a larger "scratch disk", probably on a PC with a large SSD drive.

This helps to explain why there is an obvious blank area on the canvas. 53 down, 47 to go! 😎

 

I just realised the original thread / topic title was !

Disappearing 1oz gold Queen's Beasts?"

Our composite photo is therefore very appropriate, as 17 of them seem to have disappeared! 🙂

 

[LawrenceChard]

On 08/09/2021 at 12:44, RDHC said:

I think you did pretty well with your Completer. Unfortunately for both of us, the gap between a Beast and a Britannia has now opened up so much that in terms of sheer bullion value it will be years before it becomes worthwhile to buy a Beast as opposed to a Britannia, unless you go for one of the special Britannia issues, which seem to be quite expensive. (Actually, even on purely aesthetic grounds,  I prefer the standard issue, standing Britannia lady.)

If you are talking about gold, then gold sovereigns are a great, and competitively priced alternative to Britannias or Queen's Beasts, but if you are talking about silver coins, then you might have a wait on your hands until the Royal Mint start making silver sovereigns, although I suspect it may only be a matter of time, after all...

After 50 years in which a Krugerrand was understood to be a gold coin, Rand Refineries and the South Africa Mint decided to introduce silver Krugerrands, and...

The so-called London Mint Orifice Office have recently been advertising a 2021 dated Silver Sovereign issued in the name of Gibraltar, ...

Although they were beaten to it by some crook on ebay who used to advertised silver sovereigns for sale on ebay many years ago.

[kimchi]

22 minutes ago, LawrenceChard said:

Although they were beaten to it by some crook on ebay who used to advertised silver sovereigns for sale on ebay many years ago.

Where else would a crook on ebay try to selld them?

[RDHC]

1 hour ago, LawrenceChard said:

If you are talking about gold, then gold sovereigns are a great, and competitively priced alternative to Britannias or Queen's Beasts, but if you are talking about silver coins, then you might have a wait on your hands until the Royal Mint start making silver sovereigns, although I suspect it may only be a matter of time, after all...

 

Yes indeed, and I am talking about gold coins. The trouble is that I am really put off by the rosy colour of contemporary sovereigns. (I also think their engraving is not as sharp as that found on pre-Elizabeth II sovereigns, perhaps because the engravers are not allowed sufficient time what with all the other work the Mint apparently demands from them - endless special issues etc.) I very much like Victorian reverse shields, but their prices remain obstinately high despite the fall in the price of bullion over the last year. Even  George V sovereigns are not cheap, at least for decent quality ones i.e. Good Very Fine to Extremely Fine.

[LawrenceChard]

2 hours ago, RDHC said:

Yes indeed, and I am talking about gold coins. The trouble is that I am really put off by the rosy colour of contemporary sovereigns. (I also think their engraving is not as sharp as that found on pre-Elizabeth II sovereigns, perhaps because the engravers are not allowed sufficient time what with all the other work the Mint apparently demands from them - endless special issues etc.) I very much like Victorian reverse shields, but their prices remain obstinately high despite the fall in the price of bullion over the last year. Even  George V sovereigns are not cheap, at least for decent quality ones i.e. Good Very Fine to Extremely Fine.

I have often commented about the colour of modern gold sovereigns, due to their lack of any silver content.

You can find some of my comments here on TSF or on a well-known website. 😎

[westminstrel]

10 hours ago, LawrenceChard said:

If you are talking about gold, then gold sovereigns are a great, and competitively priced alternative to Britannias or Queen's Beasts, but if you are talking about silver coins, then you might have a wait on your hands until the Royal Mint start making silver sovereigns, although I suspect it may only be a matter of time, after all...

After 50 years in which a Krugerrand was understood to be a gold coin, Rand Refineries and the South Africa Mint decided to introduce silver Krugerrands, and...

The so-called London Mint Orifice Office have recently been advertising a 2021 dated Silver Sovereign issued in the name of Gibraltar, ...

Although they were beaten to it by some crook on ebay who used to advertised silver sovereigns for sale on ebay many years ago.

In a way, in the recent past, the “silver sovereign” has already been issued by the Royal Mint, as a Crown, to commemorate special royal occasions, the most recent being for the birth of Prince George in 2013.

I believe previous to this it was the 1951 Crown to commemorate the centenary of the Great Exhibition in 1851.

I hope the RM keeps things this way - Pistrucci’s St. George and the Dragon design is special and a classic.

[RDHC]

To supplement my remark about 'softer' engraving of the details for modern sovereigns, has anyone else noticed that somehow St. George has also lost the streamers for his helmet on the 2021 sovereign and presumably for some way back. That really is cost-cutting. 

[Zhorro]

15 minutes ago, RDHC said:

To supplement my remark about 'softer' engraving of the details for modern sovereigns, has anyone else noticed that somehow St. George has also lost the streamers for his helmet on the 2021 sovereign and presumably for some way back. That really is cost-cutting. 

Yes, from 2009 the streamers were removed.  I think this was to help distinguish the sovereign from the half sovereign.  People are often surprised how small the sovereign is, and the half sovereign is not much smaller.  Therefore, the removal of the streamer from the helmet, is a distinguishing factor - especially if you are just looking at a photo.

[Zhorro]

5 hours ago, westminstrel said:

In a way, in the recent past, the “silver sovereign” has already been issued by the Royal Mint, as a Crown, to commemorate special royal occasions, the most recent being for the birth of Prince George in 2013.

I believe previous to this it was the 1951 Crown to commemorate the centenary of the Great Exhibition in 1851.

I hope the RM keeps things this way - Pistrucci’s St. George and the Dragon design is special and a classic.

Don't forget that the Royal Mint has experimented in the past!

[Booky586]

 

12 minutes ago, Zhorro said:

Yes, from 2009 the streamers were removed.  I think this was to help distinguish the sovereign from the half sovereign.  People are often surprised how small the sovereign is, and the half sovereign is not much smaller.  Therefore, the removal of the streamer from the helmet, is a distinguishing factor - especially if you are just looking at a photo.

The helmet streamer has come and gone before this recent loss. The Victorian young head sovereign didn't have the steamer either. I honestly don't know the reason though.

[westminstrel]

2 hours ago, Zhorro said:

Don't forget that the Royal Mint has experimented in the past!

The 1935 Crown indeed.

If we’re talking about other depictions of St. George and the Dragon, then we have some more examples from the Royal Mint.

The 2015 Crown for Prince George’s second birthday.

 

The 2018 Crown for his fifth birthday.

Both images from Chards.

And then there’s the bullion “valiant” coin which has some minor variations from year to year but the primary depiction of G&D remains constant.

Image from Royal Mint.

[LawrenceChard]

10 hours ago, RDHC said:

To supplement my remark about 'softer' engraving of the details for modern sovereigns, has anyone else noticed that somehow St. George has also lost the streamers for his helmet on the 2021 sovereign and presumably for some way back. That really is cost-cutting. 

Can't get the ribbon! 🙂

[Mtaybar]

Chards have a good price on their 1oz gold bullion queen's beasts at the moment. Shame they don't accept Barclay card though 🤣. 

[Mtaybar]

4 minutes ago, Mtaybar said:

Chards have a good price on their 1oz gold bullion queen's beasts at the moment. Shame they don't accept Barclay card though 🤣. 

Right around £20 more than a 2021 Britannia. 

[sixgun]

On 16/07/2021 at 21:15, RDHC said:

I can't afford the 1oz coins, but I thought it be nice to keep an eye on them for the future, so I have been tracking their prices on several websites over the last few weeks. To my dismay, several examples have disappeared despite absolutely premium prices, so I deduce that they existed in very, very limited quantities, perhaps only one of each coin. I would instance Apmex, where the Dragon and the Griffin are no longer available, or Bullionstar, where the Lion (the royal one) no longer features. I'm no expert, but I would guess that these particularly dramatic designs are probably the three most popular beasts, so perhaps it is no surprise. Nonetheless, not good news for those of us that missed the boat starting in 2016. Nothing much second hand on ebay either, so far as I can see.

Comments anyone?

i bought 5 x 1 oz gold QB's off the forum last week. They do come up on the selling section. If you were serious about buying them then you need to be a premium member to have the best chance of picking them up. If you are just looking then look in the selling section - you will see how often they turn up and the sort of prices they go for.