1874 London shield a true rarity?

[dicker]

9 hours ago, Silverlocks said:

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?

Certainly in November at least one dealer was paying 1.5pct over spot for bullion Sovs. 

Sure, they won’t pay top whack for coins that are in awful condition / underweight, but there is definitely a shortage of Sovs on the 2nd hand market in my opinion.  

 

[Silverlocks]

2 hours ago, dicker said:

Certainly in November at least one dealer was paying 1.5pct over spot for bullion Sovs. 

Sure, they won’t pay top whack for coins that are in awful condition / underweight, but there is definitely a shortage of Sovs on the 2nd hand market in my opinion.  

There's definitely a run on sovs at the moment.  If you look at (say) HGM, Gerrards etc. they're completely out of stock a lot of the time.

[Britannia47]

15 hours 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a dealer that would be less than VF or so* - my guess is that anything in really bad condition gets scrapped, or got withdrawn back when they were still in circulation.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.

A Sovereign weighs 7.98805 rounded down to 7.98, although it’s closer to 7.99. In the old days Sovereigns were taken out of circulation if the weight dropped below 7.93787 which is equal to a loss of about 0.051g. It would be the Banks job I guess to make that assessment on their more accurate scales. However, shop-keepers and jewellers could probably see that weight loss was proportional to  wear on the coin, and using the basic sovereign scale whether fake or not. How much wear visually would make it under weight? …….

I weighed 15 Victoria Young head shields from 1843 to 1881 to see the correlation. This was done on calibrated Tania scales. As a control, a 2022 Sovereign gave a reading of 8.00g. Apart from 2, all were between 7.96 and 7.99.

The photo shows the 1855 and 1862 at 7.93g making them candidates for the melting pot! The wear can clearly be seen in the hair on both Sovereigns - so maybe ‘Fine’ condition?  However, the later minted 1870 and 1881 are probably EF+
Of course there will always be numismatic value to most ‘shields’ versus condition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Silverlocks]

10 minutes ago, Britannia47 said:

[ . . . ]

The photo shows the 1855 and 1862 at 7.93g making them candidates for the melting pot! The wear can clearly be seen in the hair on both Sovereigns - so maybe ‘Fine’ condition?  However, the later minted 1870 and 1881 are probably EF+
 

It's hard to tell where the boundary between (say) F and aboutVF, for example sits.  There are a decent number of archetypal examples of various grades but not a lot of treatment of the boundary cases in the literature.  It also tends to be a bit subjective.  The VF examples in Allen's book have some noticeable wear, and the F examples are quite badly worn with not much detail left in the hair at all.  If you view them in terms of the examples Allen provides they would be something like VF or perhaps aboutVF. Probably closer to F or gF from some other examples I've seen like this one from Chards web site.

https://www.chards.co.uk/blog/coin-grading-uk-cgs-pcgs-ngc-uk-and-us/79

 

[Silverlocks]

For example, if we compare the Fine and Very Fine examples from Allen's book and the examples on the Chards website I linked earlier, you can see some differences in opinion on where the grades lie. Please excuse the potato-quality scans.  These come from the Coin Press edition of Allen's book, which (from samples I've seen) looks like they didn't have the original artwork for the photos and took it from the printed photos in the Rotographic press edition.  I've got a Rotographic edition on order, which hopefully has better quality photos.
VF (Allen)	Fine (Allen)
VF (Chards)	Fine (Chards)
As can be seen, the Allen examples are appreciably more worn than the examples seen on the Chards website.  Who to go by?  Depends on whether you're buying or selling, I suppose.  I'm gravitating towards my own opinions, but still a novice in the field.  What's really missing in the literature, I feel, is a good discussion of the boundary conditions.

[refero]

that s an interesting contribution but i feel this discussion is going a bit off topic; my intention was to focus on the scarcity (r3? /r4?) of a specific sovereign (1874 London shield) and to get all thoughts that could be shared on that

 

[Britannia47]

16 minutes ago, refero said:

that s an interesting contribution but i feel this discussion is going a bit off topic; my intention was to focus on the scarcity (r3? /r4?) of a specific sovereign (1874 London shield) and to get all thoughts that could be shared on that

 

Point taken, but this often happens on TSF especially after others have tried to point the questionnaire  in the right direction. In the past I have emailed Steve Hill at Sovereign Rarities to query his Rating on a certain coin. That worked for me….!

[Silverlocks]

1 hour ago, refero said:

that s an interesting contribution but i feel this discussion is going a bit off topic; my intention was to focus on the scarcity (r3? /r4?) of a specific sovereign (1874 London shield) and to get all thoughts that could be shared on that

 

52 minutes ago, Britannia47 said:

Point taken, but this often happens on TSF especially after others have tried to point the questionnaire  in the right direction. In the past I have emailed Steve Hill at Sovereign Rarities to query his Rating on a certain coin. That worked for me….!

This ^^^ 

The vendor is claiming to have several examples of a very rare coin.  It's possible that they all came from the same place (so essentially a single event that breaks assumptions about correlation), but without knowing their provenance we're speculating about the unknowable - at least something depending on information not in the public domain and possibly not recorded anywhere.  If you were to ask him about the provenance it might be quite illuminating.

[dicker]

2 hours ago, refero said:

that s an interesting contribution but i feel this discussion is going a bit off topic; my intention was to focus on the scarcity (r3? /r4?) of a specific sovereign (1874 London shield) and to get all thoughts that could be shared on that

 

@Silverlocks It really would be worth you setting up your own grading thread rather than taking other dedicated discussions off course with your views on grading.

[refero]

an update 1 year after...

considering that Sovereign rarities has now 10! ten!!!! 1874 london shield sovereign on sale, i wonder if the R4 (from 15 to 25 exemplary known) awarded to this coin should be reconsidered...

it is also in my opinion a huge conflict of interest where Mr S. Hill stands right now, as he's at the same time in charge of the review of the "Gold Sovereign" book by Marsh (where the R3-R4-R5 etc are assigned) and a almost unique seller of the above mentioned coin.

If that coin would be correctly downgraded to R3, how lower should prices go?? 

Edited December 29, 2023 by refero