No, they are not. For those who don't know what they are. The four pound pieces were issued in 1945 for payments to Saudi Arabia. The one pound pieces were issued in 1947. Both were struck at the Philadelphia Mint. John Sennock, who designed the Roosevelt Dime and Franklin Half Dollar, gets credit for the obverse. It was illegal for U.S. collectors to own these coins until President Ford lifted the gold ownership bans in 1974.
Those are bada$$ and probably sell for big money! I found one that sold on Heritage for $1,092.50 but that was back in 2009! What's the approximate price today, just curious and what was the mintage??
I find it interesting that the smaller disc exactly competes with the British sovereign in content, the larger is exactly 4 sovereigns.
The British sovereign was the world's gold coin at that time. The U.S. was strictly into gold bars only or credits to collect gold bars. These coins have been called "American sovereigns." Saudi Arabia stuck this coin, which is sovereign sized, a couple of years after those American gold pieces were issued, in 1950. I have this piece because I spotted in a certification holder at a FUN show, and the dealer was selling it for around melt. It went with the previous coins in my collection.
I can't give you prices on those American sovereign pieces these days. The demand for gold is up, but sometimes the numismatic value gets swallowed by the melt value of the coin to the point where the value isn't much over melt. That's what is happening to lower graded U.S. 10 and 20 gold pieces these days. As for mintages, there were 91,210 of the four sovereign pieces stuck. They contain .941 of an ounce of pure gold. The one sovereign mintage was 121,364. They contained .2354 ounces of pure gold. Despite the mintages, I think that the smaller piece is scarcer because of melting. A great many of these pieces were melted. I have understood that the Saudis sold a lot of them in India because they could get high prices for them there. There are also lots of counterfeits, so watch your step.
$4000/$5000 respectfully in AU58 and it's one of those things you should buy graded. Mintage was 91,1xx and said that most were melted shortly after in Saudi Arabia.
I took the ARAMCO gold disk to the coin club meeting on Tuesday...did a little show and tell and educated others on the piece. It was a big hit...a couple guys offered to take it off my hands for what I paid. ( No thanks ) A couple others said it was overpriced and they would put their money in something else. But no one had seen one in hand or let alone had one in their collection, so I gained a little street credit for having a nice piece in my collection
I'm not interested in selling any of these "Blue Chip" historical U'S. Mint round ingots; HOWEVER, everything has a price and right now $4500 is mine.
Amazing ARAMCO's, great to look at but I would find it hard to own one only because if I owned one I could never sell it, and I already have enough gold coins I won't part with!
The two example I posted are both graded MS-62 by NGC and PCGS respectively. It is hard to find these pieces in higher grades because of the large, flat surfaces on the coins' design that are prone to marks.
Not graded. I have 4. In fifty plus years I've examined over twenty. Also have seen a few fakes. Only two of the genuine pieces were what I consider to be FULL MINT STATE although most of them are what I call "Unc enough = modern 62's.
