Collecting Sovereigns

[xthomasx]

1 hour ago, Divmad said:

Will the bullion version initially sell at a small premium to spot, like all other modern sovereign yearly issues?

I would think so. 

[MJCOIN]

2 hours ago, Divmad said:

Will the bullion version initially sell at a small premium to spot, like all other modern sovereign yearly issues?

As I understand it it will cost no more than a 'standard' bullion sovereign.  A bit of a no brainer really.

[James32]

2 hours ago, Divmad said:

Will the bullion version initially sell at a small premium to spot, like all other modern sovereign yearly issues?

Yes it will be the normal spot plus premium, check a variety of dealers though as not all prices are equal. 

[MonkeysUncle]

Seems good advice to me, and advice I think I shall follow.

This year I've tucked a few gold Queens Beast completer coins away - I convinced myself the £25 premium over a Britannia my dealer charges would likely be worth it.

Anything different from the norm stands a chance of becoming collectible is a lesson I learned years ago in the stamp world.

 

[Divmad]

Am I reading Numista correctly, when they state that the 2013 sovereign only had about 11,000 sold in total of bullion and proof versions combined? This must make that year the scarcest of the QE2 sovereigns. 11,000!!  And just a run of the mill 4th portrait design, too. Why isn't this one more expensive to buy and collect?

1 Sovereign - Elizabeth II (4th portrait) - United Kingdom – Numista

 

[GoldDiggerDave]

21 minutes ago, Divmad said:

Am I reading Numista correctly, when they state that the 2013 sovereign only had about 11,000 sold in total of bullion and proof versions combined? This must make that year the scarcest of the QE2 sovereigns. 11,000!!  And just a run of the mill 4th portrait design, too. Why isn't this one more expensive to buy and collect?

1 Sovereign - Elizabeth II (4th portrait) - United Kingdom – Numista

 

https://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/mintage-figures/bullion-coins/

Always handy to check the RM sales figures.

[Divmad]

1 hour ago, GoldDiggerDave said:

https://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/mintage-figures/bullion-coins/

Always handy to check the RM sales figures.

But they stop at 2005.

[GoldDiggerDave]

Yes the bullion sales are always like this. 

[Divmad]

3 minutes ago, GoldDiggerDave said:

Yes the bullion sales are always like this. 

It's a real puzzle, and I wish someone could give a more precise sales number, through forensic digging.

I note that Numista have bullion mintage figures of 250,000 each for 2010 and 2011, yet only 2695 for 2013. Whilst I understand that the 2013 number is suspiciously low, where did they get the 250k numbers from? Is that what is a reasonable mintage figure going forwards every year? Just because they're bullion coins, like all the ones of the QE2 era by the way, doesn't mean RM won't know how many were minted or sold since 2005?

[GoldDiggerDave]

I read something a while back when someone was pressing the RM for the information under the freedom of information act, nothing came of it, and the RM say it’s something to do with confidentiality of the bullion market or something like that.  Others on here might know more 

[GoldDiggerDave]

10 hours ago, Divmad said:

But they stop at 2005.

This what you are after?

 

[Divmad]

54 minutes ago, GoldDiggerDave said:

This what you are after?

 

Perfect. You're a star!

Now this is interesting. Look at the low "normal" aka bullion mintage figures for the years 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007 in particular. If these are accurate numbers, then surely these years will hold their own very well against the average in the future.

[GoldDiggerDave]

7 minutes ago, Divmad said:

Perfect. You're a star!

Now this is interesting. Look at the low "normal" aka bullion mintage figures for the years 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007 in particular. If these are accurate numbers, then surely these years will hold their own very well against the average in the future.

Buy this book mate it will have all you need.  

[dicker]

It’s an excellent book.  I thought it would be best in spreadsheet form, so I used two teams to translate the tables into a spreadsheet, then diffed them to find differences and now have a beautiful spreadsheet of all the Marsh tables.  
 

Way better in spreadsheet form for a quick lookup!

[Divmad]

22 hours ago, dicker said:

It’s an excellent book.  I thought it would be best in spreadsheet form, so I used two teams to translate the tables into a spreadsheet, then diffed them to find differences and now have a beautiful spreadsheet of all the Marsh tables.  
 

Way better in spreadsheet form for a quick lookup!

What do you mean, "then diffed them to find differences..."? Curious.

[dicker]

So I used two offshore teams in two countries to type the tables in to an Excel spreadsheet.  

I then took the two spreadsheets and used an application called “Beyond Compare” to compare the date in the spreadsheets - where there was a difference, I checked Marsh and accepted the correct value.  
 

This technique of “double keying” and then reconciling differences is often done when keying old texts that can’t be translated by OCR!

There are probably much easier ways to do this but I know how to get a precise result and they were doing some other work for me along similar lines so it was cheap!

Best

Dicker

[SilverStorm]

On 16/11/2021 at 01:17, Divmad said:

I read somewhere that a lot of these older sovereigns in circulation were melted down and shipped as gold bullion to the USA in part settlement of war incurred debts. Was this for WW1 or WW2 or both? I wonder what % of Victorian sovereigns went that way?

I posted awhile back where Britain shipped their gold to Canada for safekeeping.  Possibly some of those sovereigns ended up there. 

[GoldDiggerDave]

@dicker The spreadsheet is a top idea mate, I keep a few photos of this in my favourites in iPhoto's  for when I'm trawling  the pawn shops.   Some days I've just taken the books in with me.

[Divmad]

On 12/12/2021 at 20:03, GoldDiggerDave said:

This what you are after?

 

Is that 2015 mintage number for "normal" sovereigns, of 10,000, anywhere near the mark? Incredibly low for a bullion grade issue.

[GoldDiggerDave]

@Divmad Yes the 2015 bullion is a very low mintage, always good to look out of 2014 proof sovereigns as well. 

[coinory]

Shieldback is where i am trying to focus as they just look unique and collectors love them too ... 

[GoldDiggerDave]

On 22/12/2021 at 19:25, coinory said:

Shieldback is where i am trying to focus as they just look unique and collectors love them too ... 

And getting unusual die numbers is always a bonus.