Spink USA
Auction 382 15 Jan 2023
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PCGS AU50 | George IV (1820-1830), Sovereign, 1828, bare head left, rev. crowned garnished shield, edge milled, 7.98g*, 7h (Spink 3801), bargmarked in otherwise residually lustrous fields, a bolder very fine, extremely rare, the lauded key date of series, in PCGS holder, graded AU50 (Cert. #32660231).
Provenance
BSJ 20, 26 September 2018, lot 21 - £15,000
The 1828 Sovereign has long been coveted by Sovereign collectors and English numismatists alike, being almost as evasive to specialist cabinets as the much-vaunted 1819 issue. Prized in any condition this 'Almost Uncirculated' third-party assignation underscores its status in the higher echelons of the believed 15-25 examples attributed by Michael Marsh to exist when penning his landmark study on the Sovereign coinage.
The reason behind their exclusivity is simple. Most of the Sovereigns struck in the 1828 Calendar year bore the 1827 date, rendering only 386,182 strikings issued for the present year. This may sound a comparatively large number, but compared to the between 2.2 million to 5.7million (1826) struck carrying the alternate years of King George IV's reign, the evidence is stark. Then of course the impartial and destructive melting of vast swathes of the early-Sovereign coinage on account of lightness progressively in the 1840s and again by 1891 has resulted in surviving numbers being exceedingly small indeed.
Edward Challis, in his excellent 1990s publication on the Royal Mint enlightens us further on the paucity of surviving early gold Sovereigns, noting that contemporary accounts frequently mentioned the preponderant scourge of 'light coins' circulating as early as the 1840s. This would suggest the notably flatter strikings of George III, George IV and William IV issues were wearing at an alarming rate, and in each utterance on the open market, potentially represented a loss against face value to each owner. The Treasury opted to recall more than 14 million Sovereigns, their fractions and the final remaining Guineas from circulation over a number of years to subsequently re-coin into new specie. The result of this is the surviving examples of 1850s-dated issues that were further bolstered by the rich new seams of gold arriving from Australia at the time.
One of the most famous numismatists of 19th Century England, James Dodsley Cuff actually worked at the Bank of England within their bullion department at this time. It is notable that his collection when sold at Sotheby's in 1854 omitted both the 1819 and 1828 from his cabinet, entirely suggestive of the lack of awareness and appreciation for these rarities in the immediate circulation life of the coinage, and the ultimate reason for why so many invariably ended up in the melting pot in the 1840s and later. Mercifully this example in such an unusually high grade was not one of them!
Estimate: $15000 - $20000
Provenance
BSJ 20, 26 September 2018, lot 21 - £15,000
The 1828 Sovereign has long been coveted by Sovereign collectors and English numismatists alike, being almost as evasive to specialist cabinets as the much-vaunted 1819 issue. Prized in any condition this 'Almost Uncirculated' third-party assignation underscores its status in the higher echelons of the believed 15-25 examples attributed by Michael Marsh to exist when penning his landmark study on the Sovereign coinage.
The reason behind their exclusivity is simple. Most of the Sovereigns struck in the 1828 Calendar year bore the 1827 date, rendering only 386,182 strikings issued for the present year. This may sound a comparatively large number, but compared to the between 2.2 million to 5.7million (1826) struck carrying the alternate years of King George IV's reign, the evidence is stark. Then of course the impartial and destructive melting of vast swathes of the early-Sovereign coinage on account of lightness progressively in the 1840s and again by 1891 has resulted in surviving numbers being exceedingly small indeed.
Edward Challis, in his excellent 1990s publication on the Royal Mint enlightens us further on the paucity of surviving early gold Sovereigns, noting that contemporary accounts frequently mentioned the preponderant scourge of 'light coins' circulating as early as the 1840s. This would suggest the notably flatter strikings of George III, George IV and William IV issues were wearing at an alarming rate, and in each utterance on the open market, potentially represented a loss against face value to each owner. The Treasury opted to recall more than 14 million Sovereigns, their fractions and the final remaining Guineas from circulation over a number of years to subsequently re-coin into new specie. The result of this is the surviving examples of 1850s-dated issues that were further bolstered by the rich new seams of gold arriving from Australia at the time.
One of the most famous numismatists of 19th Century England, James Dodsley Cuff actually worked at the Bank of England within their bullion department at this time. It is notable that his collection when sold at Sotheby's in 1854 omitted both the 1819 and 1828 from his cabinet, entirely suggestive of the lack of awareness and appreciation for these rarities in the immediate circulation life of the coinage, and the ultimate reason for why so many invariably ended up in the melting pot in the 1840s and later. Mercifully this example in such an unusually high grade was not one of them!
Estimate: $15000 - $20000