Owner Comments:
S-3852, Marsh 25, 'Closed 2'
Acquired from: Heritage
Means: Auction 3102, Lot 32597
Date: 4 November 2022
Ex: Doctors Without Borders charity
Critique: A very sad day for grading by NGC. This is one of the worst examples I've seen from them on over-grading a coin. The grader had the nerve to call this MS61, when it clearly shows signs of wear on the obverse. I would grade this coin AU55. The reverse is a pathetically weak strike, evident on the lower central portion of the shield. This was most likely caused by excessive die lapping in this area, a process by which used dies were polished in order to extend life. All of the high points in this area, including harp, lions, leaves, and ribbon are heavily worn down. Die lapping was frequently used to "erase" surface die cracks, and there appears to be the remnants of one from the wreath up through the lions. So this may have been the main target of the technician doing the lapping, and he got a bit too aggressive.
So what happened here? I've shown the full NGC holder for the obverse so that the very interesting provenance to "MSF" charity can be seen. Obviously, this coin was originally auctioned in Europe, since the reference to MSF is shown in both French and German. In English, the organization is known as "Doctors Without Borders." This is actually a very fine group, and I've personally contributed to them in the past. Perhaps the NGC grader had a soft spot for them, and boosted the coin grade a bit to help them out financially? A nice gesture, but not really ethical, since grades should never be compromised based on the owner or provenance of a piece. So I'm guessing that the grader had a fight with his girlfriend on the day he handled this coin, and went temporarily insane. That could explain this travesty.
To make matters worse, there was a brief but intense fight for this coin during the auction, and I ended up paying about 20% more than it's worth IF it were actually MS61 (which it clearly is not). So, since I was well-aware in advance how badly this piece was over-graded, and saw it was quite over-priced during the auction, why did I buy it? I know what you're thinking ... I had a fight with my girlfriend that day and went temporarily insane! No, sorry to disappoint. And I didn't buy it solely for the very unusual provenance, even though it has some personal connection to me.
I'm very interested in mint errors on old gold sovereigns, and one particular kind of error that I watch out for is examples of doubling, where the image is struck slightly off, usually during multiple strikes to create the working hub die. In modern times, when this is found to have happened the die is immediately discarded. But 100 to 200 years ago, the process of die creation was very expensive and time-consuming, so if the doubling was deemed minor or at least not very noticeable, they went ahead and used the compromised die in coin production. As it turns out, this particular coin shows the most extreme case I've encountered to date of pivoted hub doubling on the reverse. On modern coins this would be listed as DDR. The doubling starts around 3 o'clock, and proceeds clockwise all the way to 12 o'clock, meaning 75% of the reverse was affected. The doubling was so intense, that it not only affected the legend and medallion (thistle/rose/clover), but also can clearly be seen in all of the outer denticles from 4 o'clock clockwise to 1 o'clock, as well as in portions of the wreath and the top part of the crown. This is without doubt the most extreme case of this type of doubling that I've ever seen on any coin, so I decided that I had to have it in my personal collection of mint errors, no matter what the cost.
It's not possible to see the fine points of doubling using the normal picture produced by NGC, which I've shown here in close-up. But on the very nice NGC Photovision pic, the details are crystal clear. I've gone ahead and shown the normal view here, since the PV version never shows the correct color of the coin, and I assume that's what other collectors prefer to see for these pix.