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1st sovereign possible problem


Bigchilli

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10 minutes ago, sovereignsteve said:

That tube of 25 sure looks impressive. It must feel good to hold although I think my collector self would cringe at all those coins touching each other.

I understand, but i really doubt these will be worth more than spot until long after i am dead, i mean today you pick up 1960's and 1970's coins for exactly the same price often in near mint, so its not something that fills me with panic to the same extent.

That said when it comes to numismatic sovereigns then its of utmost importance they are kept away from each other and possibly graded and slabbed. 

I have my eye on this for instance:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/161883163550

He had a buy it now for £850 and hes taken it off, im wondering if i should have pulled the trigger when i had the chance, what do you reckon? 

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11 minutes ago, Danny-boy said:

 

I just put my sovereigns in two RM tubes, but they hold 29 each, assume the edges are more raised on newer ones.

 

 

Not bothering with the capsule and case storage anymore then?

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11 minutes ago, Danny-boy said:  

I just put my sovereigns in two RM tubes, but they hold 29 each, assume the edges are more raised on newer ones.

 

 

Not bothering with the capsule and case storage anymore then?

No buddy, it just takes up too much space like the silver did.

Can now fit my stack into a smartie tube [emoji1]

Stacker since 2013

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2 hours ago, goldbones said:

Thanks, i might add that the prices direct from the mint are not that much dearer than the likes of atkinsons, i only spent the extra bit (like £60) to see what their service is like, and to be honest there is no difference between buying from the mint and bullion dealers EXCEPT the mint charge more and are slow to deliver and are more hassle to sign up and get an account.

 

 

Yeah was going to order from the mint but they wanted me to send ID

Hassle much!

 

What year did they start adding more copper?the older dogs look a nicer colour

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23 minutes ago, Bigchilli said:

Yeah was going to order from the mint but they wanted me to send ID

Hassle much!

 

What year did they start adding more copper?the older dogs look a nicer colour

All the way up to about 1880 i believe based on what chards had done with XRF   see here http://www.goldsovereigns.co.uk/goldcoinalloyanalysis.html , but the older ones look better due to the copper in the coin oxidising, in other words 100 years from now people will say they prefer 2015 coins to the shiny new 2115 ones.

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3 hours ago, Danny-boy said:

 

I just put my sovereigns in two RM tubes, but they hold 29 each, assume the edges are more raised on newer ones.

 

It's a nice weight to hold in the hand, especially two of them full.

 

I'm sure they will come out in exactly the same condition they went in, well hopefully anyway emoji1.png

Shouldn't be any problem. I assume they're mainly used anyway. Will be hardly any scuffing unless you rattle them around a lot.

I realise there's part of me that's a bit OCD about this issue but I'm pretty pragmatic and realistic about about it really.:lol:

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3 hours ago, goldbones said:

I understand, but i really doubt these will be worth more than spot until long after i am dead, i mean today you pick up 1960's and 1970's coins for exactly the same price often in near mint, so its not something that fills me with panic to the same extent.

You make a good point and I agree completely, I'm not really that bad, honest;)

 

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4 hours ago, goldbones said:

That said when it comes to numismatic sovereigns then its of utmost importance they are kept away from each other and possibly graded and slabbed. 

When you consider that old sovereigns were meant to be used as general coinage, a little scuffing between a few coins isn't really a big deal.

They were thrown into bags along with hundreds of others and rattled around as these bags were dragged and thrown around the mint and transported to banks etc, so bag marks are common. It's just that when I see a beautiful, old and well preserved sovereign and realise how soft gold is and how easily damaged they are, I just want to wrap them in cotton wool. This is where slabbing comes in I guess and is a boon for preservation, although I'm not a big fan of the process in general.

I've seen too many coins that have been ruined by carelessness and neglect. Yes and unwise attempts at cleaning/polishing.

It's not just the aesthetics either. If you consider the difference in value between a good, well preserved sovereign and an exceptional one, there's more than a little monetary concern too. ;)

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4 hours ago, goldbones said:

I have my eye on this for instance:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/161883163550

He had a buy it now for £850 and hes taken it off, im wondering if i should have pulled the trigger when i had the chance, what do you reckon? 

I'm actually surprised they graded that a 55 considering that very ugly scratch near the eye. I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd have graded it VF features.

It's really difficult to predict what it'll sell for. Without the scratch and not slabbed, I would expect such a coin to sell on ebay for £800 - 900

The scratch knocks it down quite a bit but it's difficult to predict the effect that the NGC stamp of approval will have. It obviously didn't sell at £850, or did they think it might fetch more at auction?

My guess is it will sell for less than the 850

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3 hours ago, goldbones said:

All the way up to about 1880 i believe based on what chards had done with XRF   see here http://www.goldsovereigns.co.uk/goldcoinalloyanalysis.html , but the older ones look better due to the copper in the coin oxidising, in other words 100 years from now people will say they prefer 2015 coins to the shiny new 2115 ones.

Interesting table, I've not seen it before.

I'd like them to do some in depth work with the 1887 series as I've noticed a great variation in colours with these coins. I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that there was more silver in that year's coins.

In my experience, the £5 and £2 coins are very gold ie non-copper coloured. The £1 coins vary, mainly gold but with some very coppery ones. The half sovs tend to be more coppery in general, some very much so, but with a few more golden coloured.

I'd be very interested to learn how much of this variation is due to actual metal content and how much due to copper oxidation.

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1 hour ago, sovereignsteve said:

When you consider that old sovereigns were meant to be used as general coinage, a little scuffing between a few coins isn't really a big deal.

They were thrown into bags along with hundreds of others and rattled around as these bags were dragged and thrown around the mint and transported to banks etc, so bag marks are common. It's just that when I see a beautiful, old and well preserved sovereign and realise how soft gold is and how easily damaged they are, I just want to wrap them in cotton wool. This is where slabbing comes in I guess and is a boon for preservation, although I'm not a big fan of the process in general.

I've seen too many coins that have been ruined by carelessness and neglect. Yes and unwise attempts at cleaning/polishing.

It's not just the aesthetics either. If you consider the difference in value between a good, well preserved sovereign and an exceptional one, there's more than a little monetary concern too. ;)

General coinage is a bit of a misnomer , or certainly if you was to think the general public were all walking around with them in pockets, in Victorian England most people only earned between 10-20 shillings per week, you was doing well if you was earning £30-40 a year. Back then a loaf of bread was 1 penny so £1 bought about 240 loaves.

 

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1 hour ago, sovereignsteve said:

Interesting table, I've not seen it before.

I'd like them to do some in depth work with the 1887 series as I've noticed a great variation in colours with these coins. I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that there was more silver in that year's coins.

In my experience, the £5 and £2 coins are very gold ie non-copper coloured. The £1 coins vary, mainly gold but with some very coppery ones. The half sovs tend to be more coppery in general, some very much so, but with a few more golden coloured.

I'd be very interested to learn how much of this variation is due to actual metal content and how much due to copper oxidation.

I don't know but copper isn't naturally homogeneous with gold, its sort of like you can temporarily mix oil in water but the oil will float up and separate, and copper and gold is the same the 22 ct is a temporary state and the laws of physics don't allow them to stay mixed up forever.

I can imagine that after 1 million years sovereigns will be like a m&m or smartie where they have a pure 100% copper shell on the outside with 24 ct gold in the middle.

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On 11/11/2015, 23:27:46, goldbones said:

General coinage is a bit of a misnomer , or certainly if you was to think the general public were all walking around with them in pockets, in Victorian England most people only earned between 10-20 shillings per week, you was doing well if you was earning £30-40 a year. Back then a loaf of bread was 1 penny so £1 bought about 240 loaves.

 

I don't know about that.  A lot of people must have still used them given some years have higher mintage figures than some recent £2 coins.

A suit of clothes cost a couple of pounds or more around the end of the Victorian period so people would have had need of coins like the sovereign.  You certainly wouldn't want to go round with a pocket full of half crowns or florins if you were going to spend a couple of pounds.    Even a junior officer or a  skilled  manual workman would make a few pounds per week so being paid in perhaps one sov, two halves and assorted change wouldn't be unknown.

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6 hours ago, Murph said:

I don't know about that.  A lot of people must have still used them given some years have higher mintage figures than some recent £2 coins.

A suit of clothes cost a couple of pounds or more around the end of the Victorian period so people would have had need of coins like the sovereign.  You certainly wouldn't want to go round with a pocket full of half crowns or florins if you were going to spend a couple of pounds.    Even a junior officer or a  skilled  manual workman would make a few pounds per week so being paid in perhaps one sov, two halves and assorted change wouldn't be unknown.

Well i was going by averages, like on this site below (if you enter starting year 1840, ending year 1900) you'll see in the early days average earnings were £30 per year , its not until the 20th century before people on average are taking home £70:

http://www.measuringworth.com/ukearncpi/

Yes for large transactions , i'd imagine once you look past the first world war most large transactions will have been done with banknotes though.

Suffice it to say though that one gold sovereign is and always has been a lot of money in a small unit. In fact its probably grossly under priced in relative terms.

 

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On 11 November 2015, goldbones said:

General coinage is a bit of a misnomer , or certainly if you was to think the general public were all walking around with them in pockets, in Victorian England most people only earned between 10-20 shillings per week, you was doing well if you was earning £30-40 a year. Back then a loaf of bread was 1 penny so £1 bought about 240 loaves.

 

Someone must have been using them as it's well documented that they were subjected to sufficient wear and tear for large numbers of them to be removed from circulation in the 19th century.

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21 minutes ago, sovereignsteve said:

Someone must have been using them as it's well documented that they were subjected to sufficient wear and tear for large numbers of them to be removed from circulation in the 19th century.

Most of the wear and tear was seen on half sovereigns, bear in mind the weight only had to drop from 7.98 down to 7.92 in a full sovereign for it to be recalled and melted down, a shift from 7.98 down to 7.92 isn't much is it when you think about it. If the coin was 7.92 it was no longer £1 it had to weigh 7.937 to be classed as legal tender below that and it wasn't.

They also in 1890 made anything struck before 1837 as no longer legal tender so they would have just melted down coins and re-struck them into new coins even if they was ok in weight, they flat out banned anything minted pre-1837.

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Id imagine coin recalls would have been done on averages and assumption, theres no way they was checking the weight of each coin, they would have thrown a bunch of like 10,000 coins or something on a scale to see if it weighed 80 kilos, if it came just under 80 kilos like 79.5 kilos they would have thrown them in the melting pot.

 

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21 minutes ago, goldbones said:

Id imagine coin recalls would have been done on averages and assumption, theres no way they was checking the weight of each coin, they would have thrown a bunch of like 10,000 coins or something on a scale to see if it weighed 80 kilos, if it came just under 80 kilos like 79.5 kilos they would have thrown them in the melting pot.

 

I would imagine the Bank of England would be continually turning over coinage and any that looked underweight would be put aside and checked. They would probably have developed experience in visually inspecting sovereigns, probably on a casual basis, and after weighing several would be able to spot the most worn ones for melting. Weighing large lots as you suggest may well have been the confirmatory step.

It may be that retail banks were instructed to send any worn coins to the BoE for inspection and melting. This would be in their interests otherwise they would be holding underweight coins, and as gold was money and vice versa, losing money as a result.

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On 11 November 2015, sovereignsteve said:

I'm actually surprised they graded that a 55 considering that very ugly scratch near the eye. I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd have graded it VF features.

It's really difficult to predict what it'll sell for. Without the scratch and not slabbed, I would expect such a coin to sell on ebay for £800 - 900

The scratch knocks it down quite a bit but it's difficult to predict the effect that the NGC stamp of approval will have. It obviously didn't sell at £850, or did they think it might fetch more at auction?

My guess is it will sell for less than the 850

 

£681 not bad. Was it you? @goldbones

 

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On 11/11/2015, 23:27:46, goldbones said:
On 13/11/2015, 09:29:14, sovereignsteve said:

Someone must have been using them as it's well documented that they were subjected to sufficient wear and tear for large numbers of them to be removed from circulation in the 19th century.

Not to mention the Victorian and Edwardian sov and/or half holders you used to get made out of silver or similar.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well I got my 3rd 2015 full sov from Atkinson's today and it's the same as the 1st one maybe slightly worse

As soon as I picked it up the raised areas sharper edge is immediately noticeable

Weighed in at 7.99g so that's fine,I'm not sure if would pass through the slot on the fisch test though due to the raised edge part 

Going to try a different dealer next

Anyone else have this??

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1 hour ago, Danny-boy said:

All my 2015's are like this.

That's reassuring

Just slightly concerned when it comes to selling,might put folk off

I'm not too worried coz they were from Atkinson's but if I had got them off ebay say I would be concerned

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I wonder if the BoE/mint ever held on to some coins were never released?  I've never heard of them releasing coins later on like the US mint has done with silver dollars between the 1960s and 80s for example.

The exact opposite was probably true.  I know my uncle, who had a back office position at a bank used to get in a lot of older money from house clearances and the like only to have to send them for destruction.  Very occasionally he was allowed to buy the odd note like white £20 at face value iirc.

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