Does anyone know just how rare the 1927 Melbourne sovereign is? It might seem somewhat hopeful to ask this on a predominantly North American forum. But the forum also has a wide international readership ... some of the North Americans here know an awful lot ... and North America is home to some of the most obsessional geeks anywhere outside the City of Oxford. The records from the Melbourne Mint say that 310,156 were issued--tiny quantities compared with the 2,000,000 a year it was minting 10 years earlier--but how many have survived? "The Gold Sovereign, by Michael A Marsh, which I regard as being the definitive short modern book on the subject, describes it as being "very rare". This means I guess that a few hundred coins should still exist in collectable grades. But Australian Stamp & Coin http://www.australianstamp.com/Coin-web/aust/sovereig/sovgeov1.htm a dealer in Melbourne, says that none are know to exist to collectors. Does anyone know which is right? Later, John
According to World Coins None are known & there are no prices listed for them. I'm sure some survived but I've not found anything.
Renniks also gives its mintage as 310,000 but says "No examples known". Compare this with the 1926 Melbourne sovereign mintage of 211,000, which Renniks prices very low, at from 250 for VF to 650 for Gem - something extremely fishy going on here! Or compare it with the 1927 Perth sovereign, 1.38M minted, priced from 475 VF to 1500 Gem. Belinda Downie (who should know) says that Australian gold sovereigns and halves are very underpriced. My impression is that there's some bargains to be had, based on the rather low prices catalogued for some relatively scarce to rare coins. If no examples of these coins are known, has anyone a plausible reason for their disappearance en masse? Could they have been hoarded ? Lost? Stolen? It was rather too many coins to just, seemingly, evaporate. A puzzle.
Sorry it's taken me a while to come back to you guys with thanks and with an attempt to answer Yahya's question. You have answered my question of course: I should not bother to search for a 1927 Melbourne sovereign. I agree. One of my focus areas is postwar Australians. In 1918, the three Australian mints reached their peak output, minting over 12 million sovereigns between them. Then Melbourne, in 1919, and Sydney, in 1920, dropped to mintages of just a few hundred thousand a year each, except for the abortive attempt to return to the gold standard in 1925. Perth continued to mint between one and two million but, as you say, lots of sovereigns disappeared. Perhaps because they are not very old, there doesn't seem to be much collector focus on them. The major rarities, like 1920 Sydney, sell for an enormous amount, but quite uncommon sovereigns are available for modest sums. Earlier 20th-century Australians trade for their bullion value unless they are in uncirculated grade. Perhaps that's as it should be--total mintages remained over 9 million throughout the reign of Edward VII--but I was a little surprised to receive an 1899 Perth in about VF grade as part of a bullion batch recently. 1899 is the key date of the Perth series, and in uncirculated grade would cost more than $A 1000. I know of two sovereign extinction events in the second quarter of the 20th century--one in the US, one in the UK--and there may have been more. Was there one in Australia? An awful lot of sovereigns were exported from the UK to the US during WWI to pay for war materiel. Presumably many of these found their way to the US Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky. My understanding is that the 1934 US Gold Reserve Act required coin to be melted and converted into bars. The vast bulk of 1916 and 1917 London-struck sovereigns disappeared into this melting pot. The second extinction event was caused by the way the Gold Standard was reinstated in the UK. Before the War, you could take a £5 note into the Bank and receive 5 sovereigns in exchange. In 1925, under the new Gold Bullion Standard, you could exchange currency for gold only in 400 ounce bars, costing about £1700. This should have reduced the amount of gold demanded; but it meant that the Bank had to melt large numbers of sovereigns to make the bars. Quite why Sydney coins were more likely to be melted than Melbourne coins remains a mystery to me. Later, John
John, Thanks for your reply, and the details on the "extinction events". If the UK needed to send a lot of gold to the US to pay for war materiel, it's certainly possible that Australia did something similar on a smaller scale. Two factors might have increased that scale after WWI beyond what might be supposed for our small population. First, as Trust Administrator (whatever the correct term may be) for Papua-New Guinea, Australia would have been responsible for its defence as well as its own. Second, Australian territory - per capita - is huge; something like the area of the lower 48 (contiguous states of the USA), with maybe 5% of the population. However, you'd think that such an "extinction" would be well documented, wouldn't you? Nice piece of luck with your 1899 Perth sovereign! Perhaps I'd better start rolling over some bullion and see what turns up? Might start a trend, like the coin roll searchers in the US?
