Owner Comments:
S-3971, Marsh 190
Acquired from: EBay
Means: Direct sale
Date: 24 June 2022
Critique: While browsing through EBay, I saw this lovely Edward VII sov for sale at a fairly cheap price. I've never owned any coin with a "+" in the grade, so I bought it just for fun. A large number of these coins have been certified by NGC, but as of June 2022 only a few are graded higher.
Tens of millions of gold sovereigns were produced by the three Australian mints during Edward's reign from 1902 to 1910, however it's very rare to find an example graded higher than MS63 for the earlier years of 1902 to 1906, from any mint. Not sure why that's the case, unless there was some calamity in 1906 that took most of the existing sovereigns out of circulation. Or perhaps banks didn't bother to keep many of those earlier dates in storage, like they seem to have done for 1907 to 1910, and thus most of the coins saw circulation.
Although this coin is so scarce in such a high grade, the seller didn't place much of a premium on it. While doing a bit of research for these comments, I noticed that this turns out to be the sole 1906-M sov graded MS63+ by NGC, and one of only two Aussie Ed VII coins minted between the early years 1902 and 1906 to receive that grade. Lucky day for me!