1874 London shield a true rarity?

[refero]

Few days ago i was looking into a well known sovereign dealer's website to discover, to my utmost surprise, the immediate availabilty of 7 (SE-VEN!) different 1874 London shield sovereigns. 

If i am not mistaken this coins is commonly known to be a R4 one, very scarce indeed and usually offered in low grades, and yet attracting a huge premium. 

is it that an incidental circumstance or, in your opinion, the scarcity of this coin has been largely exaggerated and its value artificially kept high by dealers and auctioneers? i kind of spot this coin quit regularly in auctions

 

[LawrenceChard]

25 minutes ago, refero said:

Few days ago i was looking into a well known sovereign dealer's website to discover, to my utmost surprise, the immediate availabilty of 7 (SE-VEN!) different 1874 London shield sovereigns. 

If i am not mistaken this coins is commonly known to be a R4 one, very scarce indeed and usually offered in low grades, and yet attracting a huge premium. 

is it that an incidental circumstance or, in your opinion, the scarcity of this coin has been largely exaggerated and its value artificially kept high by dealers and auctioneers? i kind of spot this coin quit regularly in auctions

1874 London shield a true rarity?

I wish you would name the "well known" dealer instead of leaving it as a mystery, but almost everybody does the same, for some unexplained reason.

It is not Chards, but there is good information about 1874 London Mint shield sovereigns here:

https://goldsovereigns.co.uk/1874victoriashield.html#:~:text=1874 shield sovereigns were issued,exist for all three mints.

Although I note the URL is misleading.

Although there is some truth that the higher the asking price, the more unsold stock a dealer is likely to have, it is naive to think that dealers and auctioneers can keep the value of goods artificialy high, except in very rare (R4?) circumstances, and then only for limited periods of time.

😎

[refero]

not a mistery at all, i am just not (be that in a good or negative way) into advertising commercial activities on public forum

it is sovereign rarities by the way

my intention is just to assess the scarcity/rarity of this coin, a coin i am actively and regularly sourcing and whose prices are irrealistic to me

Edited December 18, 2022 by refero

[ZRPMs]

Just checked my dates. I have an 1874 but only a bullion with St George. From my excel sheet it is a London mint though. Picked it up a long time ago and only paid bullion for it. I don't think I'd be paying massive premiums for it. I've not really got in to the rarer coins as yet no sure if I'm tight or not a numismatic. Great info from Chards though. 

[dicker]

Odd that quite a number of the same R4 coin would turn up at the same dealer at the same time?

I don’t really trust the Marsh numbers, especially when they get into “R”

[LawrenceChard]

On 18/12/2022 at 13:13, refero said:

not a mistery at all, i am just not (be that in a good or negative way) into advertising commercial activities on public forum

it is sovereign rarities by the way

my intention is just to assess the scarcity/rarity of this coin, a coin i am actively and regularly sourcing and whose prices are irrealistic to me

Thank you.

As far as I am concerned, it is not about giving free advertising, good or bad, to commercial enterprises, but more about informing the entire community clearly, simply, and efficiently.

Some may even have doubted the accuracy of your information. Presenting your evidence makes it easier to believe, and also for anyone to check for themselves.

😎

Edited December 21, 2022 by LawrenceChard

[Britannia47]

My Marsh/Hill 2017 estimates 11-20 have survived. 20% to 25% held by one dealer? Who knows!
Hello! What’s this?…….😜

 

 

[Foster88]

An interesting topic and I’ve seen many sovereigns and half sovereigns go through several coin auctions that Marsh rates (as of the 2021 edition) as R2, R3 and R4. The Marsh guide may well be correct on some, if not the majority of them. Checking other auction past sales usually shows very few sold.

So whilst the Marsh guide may not always be right, it isn’t far off from my experience. Many sovereigns unfit for circulation were melted down and many more were sent overseas in early 1930’s and undoubtedly were also melted down. The late 1920’s sovereigns, particularly the Australian mintages (S, M, P Mints) were a notable ‘victim’ of the melting pot in the early 1930’s and that’s why many 1920’s Australian sovereigns of a healthy mintage are now considered rare.

However, the above can be applied to any older sovereign and that’s the beauty of older sovereigns. There could have been an original mintage of 1,000,000 or 200,000 but only 40 or 20 may survive today. It’s a case of we’ll never really know.

 

[refero]

On 21/12/2022 at 15:27, Britannia47 said:

My Marsh/Hill 2017 estimates 11-20 have survived. 20% to 25% held by one dealer? Who knows!
Hello! What’s this?…

i have no idea how many survived. 7 /11 represents 63%; 7/20 represents 35%. In any case it is indeed an odd concentration for a such rare coin

[Silverlocks]

On 18/12/2022 at 12:16, refero said:

Few days ago i was looking into a well known sovereign dealer's website to discover, to my utmost surprise, the immediate availabilty of 7 (SE-VEN!) different 1874 London shield sovereigns. 

If i am not mistaken this coins is commonly known to be a R4 one, very scarce indeed and usually offered in low grades, and yet attracting a huge premium. 

is it that an incidental circumstance or, in your opinion, the scarcity of this coin has been largely exaggerated and its value artificially kept high by dealers and auctioneers? i kind of spot this coin quit regularly in auctions

 

According to Marsh, something like 500,000 of them were minted in London (plus some in Oz), which is quite low but not so low as to indicate that sort of rarity without some external factor at play.  Marsh does label this as R4 (11-20 known examples) although it doesn't elaborate as to why this might be the case.  It's possible that this is a typo in the book, I suppose, as it's not obvious why the survivorship would be so low.

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Silverlocks

[dicker]

50 minutes ago, Silverlocks said:

According to Marsh, something like 500,000 of them were minted in London (plus some in Oz), which is quite low but not so low as to indicate that sort of rarity without some external factor at play.  Marsh does label this as R4 (11-20 known examples) although it doesn't elaborate as to why this might be the case.  It's possible that this is a typo in the book, I suppose, as it's not obvious why the survivorship would be so low.

 

Don’t conflate the mints, totally separate mintages.

The Marsh numbers are based on factors explored here before.  Given the previous versions of Marsh, I doubt this is a typo.

[Britannia47]

22 minutes ago, Silverlocks said:

According to Marsh, something like 500,000 of them were minted, which is quite low.  Marsh does label this as R4 (11-20 known examples) although it doesn't elaborate as to why.  It's possible that this is a typo in the book, I suppose, as it's not obvious why the survivorship would be so low.

My two earlier Marsh Books 1980 & 1999 both give Marsh 58 as R4. (15-25)  I suspect that Steve Hill has copied verbatim many of the rarity ratings into his 2 revised editions. I have the 2017 version which oddly gives the known examples as 11-20. which if anything contradicts current evidence of there being more in existence!  It may be that a downwards revision is needed to at least R3 (Extremely rare) to reflect this. Marsh ratings are only a guide, and are only changed as a result of a known 1874(London) Sovereign passing through private or dealers hands/collections/auctions etc. or whatever criteria they use. 

Perhaps someone should have bought all Seven and made a huge profit! 🙂

PS:  My 1874 photo above was actually an  'M' ! 

[Silverlocks]

52 minutes ago, dicker said:

The Marsh numbers are based on factors explored here before.  

Could you please elaborate on that - it's not entirely clear what you're talking about.

To clarify what I meant, although the mintage is relatively low, doesn't seem low enough to indicate why this year should be disproportionately rare as opposed to other years surrounding it.

Edited December 27, 2022 by Silverlocks

[refero]

1 hour ago, Silverlocks said:

According to Marsh, something like 500,000 of them were minted in London (plus some in Oz), which is quite low but not so low as to indicate that sort of rarity without some external factor at play.  Marsh does label this as R4 (11-20 known examples) although it doesn't elaborate as to why this might be the case.  It's possible that this is a typo in the book, I suppose, as it's not obvious why the survivorship would be so low.

 

520.713 is the total mintage of that year (1874) for the london sovereign coniage. But that includes both the St George and the shield reverses. How that number is split between the 2 is officially unknown

Edited December 27, 2022 by refero

[Silverlocks]

12 minutes ago, refero said:

520.713 is the total mintage of that year (1874) for the london sovereign coniage. But that includes both the St George and the shield reverses

That might explain it* - Marsh does not specify the exact breakdown (maybe not recorded), but the mintage of shields could be considerably lower than this, potentially no more than a few percent of the mintage of (say) 1872.  I suppose if there were records of the dies used, one could possibly estimate the proportion of shields in that year.

* This does get a mention in the St. George listing on P106, but not on P95.

Edited December 27, 2022 by Silverlocks

[refero]

thing is, 

NGC reports 22 slabbed 1874 london shield sov

PCGS reports none. Or at least i couldt find any record. Assuming (if) a similar population of 20ish slabbed coins that would make a total of around 40 slabbed coins (and i am exaggerating)

i find quite unlikely that a single dealer is holding 7 of them all together at the same time

[Britannia47]

Try looking at ‘Marsh Scarcity Rating - How Accurate?’ Topic  by Dicker Feb 20th this year! 

[refero]

"We note as of April 2022 that a total of 42 pieces of the very rare 1874 shield Sovereign have been graded by both NGC and PCGS, of which only six pieces are finer than this coin". 

that is copied/pasted from sov rarities website

According to that, 16,6% of the known (slabbed) population of 1874 london shield reverse is currently owned by a single dealer. Sure guys and look at the window, a flying donk!

[Silverlocks]

42 minutes ago, refero said:

According to that, 16,6% of the known (slabbed) population of 1874 london shield reverse is currently owned by a single dealer. Sure guys and look at the window, a flying donk!

If one were to don a tinfoil hat, one might note that said dealer is also the employer of the author of the revisions in the current edition of Marsh. 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Silverlocks

[dicker]

2 hours ago, Silverlocks said:

Could you please elaborate on that - it's not entirely clear what you're talking about.

To clarify what I meant, although the mintage is relatively low, doesn't seem low enough to indicate why this year should be disproportionately rare as opposed to other years surrounding it.

Marsh scarcity rating is subjective, but measures coins in grade VF or higher and NOT all coins that exist.

The first edition of Marsh was published in 1980.  A time that there was no way of consolidating data sources easily to be super accurate about populations.  Four subsequent versions of Marsh have revised some of the population metrics, but not extensively or radically so.

I suspect that using meta analysis of auction results and dealer inventories (if this were ever possible) would allow for much more accurate population reports. This is is standard practice in academia where data from multiple experiments are pooled to get a better view using larger data sets.

Die numbers listed in Marsh are an example of where Marsh is lacking.  You don’t have to look at all far in auctions / sales to find die numbers that are not listed in Marsh.  

Marsh is a great reference, but the reader needs to understand:

- The point about VF

- Scarcity rating is a guide only

- Marsh certainly doesn’t contain all rarities / varieties

- There will be sovereign collections that exist / bags of Sovs in vaults that could fundamentally change the scarcity ratings once “found”

 

 

[Silverlocks]

57 minutes ago, dicker said:

I suspect that using meta analysis of auction results and dealer inventories (if this were ever possible) would allow for much more accurate population reports. This is is standard practice in academia where data from multiple experiments are pooled to get a better view using larger data sets.

There's probably a masters thesis in that for somebody somewhere, although auction records are going to have sampling bias won't be easy to quantify - i.e. you're not going to see many Poor or Fair grade coins turning up in collectibles auctions unless they're from very rare years.  If you could find stats for coins removed from circulation for being underweight you might be able to fit a curve to those, although even then the stats might not have a breakdown by the mintage year of the coin. 

I've not seen any evidence of the Royal Mint ever doing that but I suppose it's not out of the question that it could have happened.

 

 

[GoldDiggerDave]

1 hour ago, Silverlocks said:

There's probably a masters thesis in that for somebody somewhere, although auction records are going to have sampling bias won't be easy to quantify - i.e. you're not going to see many Poor or Fair grade coins turning up in collectibles auctions unless they're from very rare years.  If you could find stats for coins removed from circulation for being underweight you might be able to fit a curve to those, although even then the stats might not have a breakdown by the mintage year of the coin. 

I've not seen any evidence of the Royal Mint ever doing that but I suppose it's not out of the question that it could have happened.

 

 

There is a lot of sovereigns being scraped today for being under weight especially Jubilee heads……if they look worn they are almost under weight all the time on the carat scales. 

[Silverlocks]

1 hour ago, GoldDiggerDave said:

There is a lot of sovereigns being scraped today for being under weight especially Jubilee heads……if they look worn they are almost under weight all the time on the carat scales. 

Not that I have a terribly big sample size but I've not seen any sovs come from a dealer that would be less than VF or so* - my guess is that anything in really bad condition gets scrapped, or got withdrawn back when they were still in circulation.  I suppose the value is still tied to spot, so folks would be justifiably annoyed if they got one that was significantly underweight.

* With the exception of one that had been polished and presumably done a stint in a ring, but would probably have still been VF or thereabouts on the obverse otherwise.

[GoldDiggerDave]

3 minutes ago, Silverlocks said:

Not that I have a terribly big sample size but I've not seen any sovs come from a dealer that would be less than VF or so* - my guess is that anything in really bad condition gets scrapped, or got withdrawn back when they were still in circulation.  I suppose the value is still tied to spot, so folks would be justifiably annoyed if they got one that was significantly underweight.

* With the exception of one that had been polished and presumably done a stint in a ring, but would probably have still been VF or thereabouts on the obverse otherwise.

Trust me loads of jubilee heads sold on here are very likely to be under weight.   I suspect some selling scrap sovereigns as full weight sovs……..I know my sovereigns. 

[Silverlocks]

15 minutes ago, GoldDiggerDave said:

Trust me loads of jubilee heads sold on here are very likely to be under weight.   I suspect some selling scrap sovereigns as full weight sovs……..I know my sovereigns. 

Oooo err.

For reasons such as this I've tried to stick to stuff that looks in visibly good condition (say VF or better), although the main reason is that - in spite of what folks say - crappy sovs still appear likely to have liquidity problems unless you're up to sell them at 96% of spot back to a dealer.  I'm progressively less inclined to buy sight unseen here.

Interesting to see jubilee head sovs are especially prone to being underweight.  Any idea why?

Edited December 27, 2022 by Silverlocks