Owner Comments:
S-3876, Marsh 172
Acquired from: Heritage
Means: Auction 61331, Lot 24017
Date: 23 July 2023
Critique: Been looking for this coin for almost a year now, trying to complete my Mints per Ruler set. It's usually sold in lower grades, heavily bag marked with poor eye appeal. This particular example seemed decent looking, so I decided to purchase it. However, ... as I was adding this coin in, I noticed that the regime change in England has created a new ruler, so my set is STILL not complete! Grrrrr. Hopefully finding a sov with King Chas III on it will be easier than this last hunt.
The Perth mint only produced Queen Vic sovs for three years, 1899-1901, so they are not so easy to locate. NGC has graded far fewer of the 1900-P coins than 1899-P and 1901-P, which adds to the difficulty. And finding any Veiled Head Vic sov in a grade higher than MS63 is exceedingly difficult and expensive. So I was lucky that this example finally showed up at auction.
This coin was offered in a special auction of Top and near-Top Pop sovereigns, which seemed to attract quite a number of wealthy bidders. But they were mostly spending their money on the Top Pop examples, while ignoring coins like this one that were second tier. The fact that as of 7/2023 only one coin is graded higher didn't seem to matter. And the fact that only one other example of this coin has been offered in US auctions for the past two and a half years also did not generate much interest. Plus that one was graded by PCGS, which would not be usable in NGC competition. I was shocked that I was able to buy this one for a ridiculously low price considering its scarcity, high grade, and condition rarity. There were about half a dozen other coins that I was interested in at this sale, but the final prices were so high that I got completely shut out on them all. It does seem that gold sovereign collecting is getting quite popular in America, unfortunately. :-(