St. James's Auctions
Auction 32 19 May 2015
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A Delightful Adelaide Pound
Australia, Victoria, Adelaide pound, type one, 1852, date below crown within border, rev. value within beaded border, fine edge milling (KM.1), extremely fine, extremely rare
Here is a coin that is an indelible testament to the discovery of gold in Australia in the early 1850s and to the pragmatism of local authorities in need of solutions. Adelaide was the only town of any size near to major goldfields. Prospectors brought specie in to town but, as was equally true in early California during its gold rush of 1849, gold dust and nuggets are not easily used for money. Commerce was stymied despite the influx of this new wealth. By November of 1852, the South Australia Legislative Council passed an emergency measure entitled the Bullion Act, and at first the assay office thereby created smelted ore into ingots, but these were not easily used in commerce. The need for a sovereign-like coin for local use was pressing. At the time, communication was by mail via sea passage, and money was sorely needed, meaning that it was not practical to await legal sanction to coin money in the name of Queen Victoria. A local die-sinker by the name of Joshua Payne was employed, and the result was the now-famous Adelaide pound featuring the distinctive legends as well as a declared fineness and weight in gold.
The issuing authority never intended its coins to be more than token issues of solid value. The local die-sinker had done his job but evidently failed to make the dies of sufficient hardness, and after striking a tiny number of coins the reverse die failed, cracking just at 12 o'clock from the rim inward (to the left of 'DWT' in the legend). Another die was quickly made, varying slightly from the first die, but it was correctly hardened and ultimately produced an estimated 25,000 gold pounds. These were all quickly put into commerce, including the first few (about 25 to 50 are thought to have been made, with the die-break, now known as 'type one'). Almost all saw much use, despite being called into question for their purity by London, which sought to establish an officially sanctioned mint, and in fact the mint was authorized by Parliament as an official branch of the Royal Mint in August of 1853; the opening of the Sydney Mint occurred on 14 May 1855, in a portion of the old Rum Hospital. The first Australian gold sovereigns were struck on 23 June of the same year, bearing a variant of the Young Head portrait seen on London mint coins. Soon they replaced the Adelaide pounds as the money of choice.
One of the ironies of the situation then caused the Adelaide pounds to disappear: the mint's assayers as well as others discovered that the Adelaide 'tokens' were in fact finer than advertised, more valuable intrinsically than the sovereigns that replaced them! Anyone in possession of an Adelaide pound did not in fact have 20 shillings (one sovereign) of value but rather 21 shillings and 11 pence, the value at the time of the gold content of the pounds. The result? Almost all Adelaide pounds ended up in melting pots. They simply disappeared. Every survivor is a miracle of chance. The presently offered coin displays evidence that it was used as money, but clearly it was never abused, and somehow it escaped the fate of almost all of the rest of the mintage. What was born as an experiment, was then rejected as inferior, then gathered up as being more valuable than it was thought to be and ultimately was greedily destroyed, ended up being desired more than anyone could ever have imagined at the time of its creation. As the image at the centre of its obverse suggests, it has become a crown jewel of the coinage of early Australia.
Estimate: £55,000-65,000
Australia, Victoria, Adelaide pound, type one, 1852, date below crown within border, rev. value within beaded border, fine edge milling (KM.1), extremely fine, extremely rare
Here is a coin that is an indelible testament to the discovery of gold in Australia in the early 1850s and to the pragmatism of local authorities in need of solutions. Adelaide was the only town of any size near to major goldfields. Prospectors brought specie in to town but, as was equally true in early California during its gold rush of 1849, gold dust and nuggets are not easily used for money. Commerce was stymied despite the influx of this new wealth. By November of 1852, the South Australia Legislative Council passed an emergency measure entitled the Bullion Act, and at first the assay office thereby created smelted ore into ingots, but these were not easily used in commerce. The need for a sovereign-like coin for local use was pressing. At the time, communication was by mail via sea passage, and money was sorely needed, meaning that it was not practical to await legal sanction to coin money in the name of Queen Victoria. A local die-sinker by the name of Joshua Payne was employed, and the result was the now-famous Adelaide pound featuring the distinctive legends as well as a declared fineness and weight in gold.
The issuing authority never intended its coins to be more than token issues of solid value. The local die-sinker had done his job but evidently failed to make the dies of sufficient hardness, and after striking a tiny number of coins the reverse die failed, cracking just at 12 o'clock from the rim inward (to the left of 'DWT' in the legend). Another die was quickly made, varying slightly from the first die, but it was correctly hardened and ultimately produced an estimated 25,000 gold pounds. These were all quickly put into commerce, including the first few (about 25 to 50 are thought to have been made, with the die-break, now known as 'type one'). Almost all saw much use, despite being called into question for their purity by London, which sought to establish an officially sanctioned mint, and in fact the mint was authorized by Parliament as an official branch of the Royal Mint in August of 1853; the opening of the Sydney Mint occurred on 14 May 1855, in a portion of the old Rum Hospital. The first Australian gold sovereigns were struck on 23 June of the same year, bearing a variant of the Young Head portrait seen on London mint coins. Soon they replaced the Adelaide pounds as the money of choice.
One of the ironies of the situation then caused the Adelaide pounds to disappear: the mint's assayers as well as others discovered that the Adelaide 'tokens' were in fact finer than advertised, more valuable intrinsically than the sovereigns that replaced them! Anyone in possession of an Adelaide pound did not in fact have 20 shillings (one sovereign) of value but rather 21 shillings and 11 pence, the value at the time of the gold content of the pounds. The result? Almost all Adelaide pounds ended up in melting pots. They simply disappeared. Every survivor is a miracle of chance. The presently offered coin displays evidence that it was used as money, but clearly it was never abused, and somehow it escaped the fate of almost all of the rest of the mintage. What was born as an experiment, was then rejected as inferior, then gathered up as being more valuable than it was thought to be and ultimately was greedily destroyed, ended up being desired more than anyone could ever have imagined at the time of its creation. As the image at the centre of its obverse suggests, it has become a crown jewel of the coinage of early Australia.
Estimate: £55,000-65,000