Marsh Scarcity Rating - How Accurate?

[refero]

Its pretty much what i wrote on another thread (1874 London shield sov, 9-10 !!! available on sovereign rarities website). I kind of find the r4 totally wrong but i understand SH being in a tricky position (if he downrate the 1874 to r3 or r2, he should cut the prices of all his pieces..)

as for the ansell, True that 250.000 were originally minted, but my understanding is that , because of the brittle gold used, most of them just cracked and were melted immediately after coinage. Hence the real figures are Way different. Also it is a very rare coin in high grades (au58 >). If i m not mistaken there are aRound 14-15 combining NGC-PCGS population 

[Booky586]

21 hours ago, refero said:

as for the ansell, True that 250.000 were originally minted, but my understanding is that , because of the brittle gold used, most of them just cracked and were melted immediately after coinage. Hence the real figures are Way different.

That's interesting. Ansell makes no mention of his specially treated sovereigns just cracking and being melted down. Do you have a source for this information?

 

Edited March 16 by Booky586