Finally got my 1879 London Mint sovereign delivered. The experts on pre-decimal gave it a unanimous thumbs-up for authenticity which was never really in doubt. Any opinion on the grade?? I feel maybe VF or slightly better. If it turns out to be an XF I'd be well pleased as those are going for around 5,000. Given recent prices on auctions, I've not done too badly I really need to buy myself a better camera
By what we in America consider the more-conservative European standard, I feel VF is probably the ceiling for this rarity. Left to myself, I'd have it at gF but I'd go along if my betters called it VF.
VF seems reasonable to me. Numismaster says only $2500 for XF so I would expect to get it for less than $2000 in that grade.
The last VF30 sold at HA for $4935 in September 2016 and they've only seen 3 examples since 1997. So at 1,500 I think I've not done too badly.
At US$1500 you should be enjoying a glass of fine wine and contemplating how the unlucky people manage to get along. Not like you'd know.
I find the valuation systems quite baffling sometimes. I believe the value of anything is what someone else is willing to pay for it. Given a mintage of only 20,013 and the highest graded by NGC at AU55 (PCGS has its highest graded at AU53), its a very scarce coin and difficult to find. So yes I do think Numismaster has it severely undervalued.
Numismaster, unless they have changed in the last few years, does nothing more than list the values listed in the Krause catalogs. And pretty much everybody knows the values listed in Krause are worse than worthless.
Numismaster IS the online version of the Krause catalog. It is useful as a guide to relative value in most cases, but it is not reliable for absolute value.
That's the only effective way to frame the question, "What is this coin worth?" You're not bidding against a price guide.
Congrats on a very hard coin to obtain. I'd grade it at gF and I would expect a TPG to grade it at VF. I've been looking for one of these for years - you did well.
London Coins has one up for auction that is graded VF/gVF. I think the TPGs would grade this at least XF45 possibly AU. I'm fairly conservative in my grading using the English standard.
I do not find that London Coins is a consistently strict grader and I do believe that the US TPGs over grade.