Owner Comments:
S-3997, Marsh 227
Acquired from: Heritage
Means: Auction 61318, Lot 21135
Date: 4 June 2023
Critique: Decent looking example of this very common Ottawa mint sovereign, with only four graded higher as of 6/2023. The images listed by the auction site are rather poor, but still better than the very low resolution NGC images. .The coin does have somewhat better eye appeal than shown here.
Only 136,000 of these coins were struck, and yet it lists in all standard catalogues as very common. This is really hard to believe, and the best explanation is that the coins were simply not popular for use in commerce at the time just after WWI, and the majority of them just sat in bank vaults for the next 80 or 90 years. These gold sovereigns were so unpopular, that this was the last year that they were ever minted in Canada. Even the $5 and $10 gold coins were discontinued in 1914, so apparently the frugal Canadians simply had no use for gold as money.
Before any auction, I always research how many examples of the coin have been offered in the last few years, just to get an idea of how strongly the interest might be. In this case, I found that twenty of them have been offered in US auctions just since the beginning of 2022, all in extremely high grade, including all four Top Pop coins That is a relatively large number, and as expected the coin sold rather cheaply for a second-tier grade. It's very strange that so many of this particular date have come to market in such a short time, and the only explanation I can think of is that some individual came across an original roll of them, had them all graded en masse, and then dealt them out somewhat slowly rather than all at once. But this was still too much for the gold sov market to absorb, and so I imagine the price of this issue will remain depressed for several years to come since supply has clearly overwhelmed demand.