Owner Comments:
S-3800, Marsh 6
Acquired from: Heritage
Means: Auction 232219, Lot 62547
Date: 12 May 2022
Critique: A very interesting coin. A quick check of the George IV set and the GB date set shows that as of 07/2022 this is the only 1822 sovereign registered for competition! Hard to believe, since it's not rare at all. Plus this is the coin's 200th anniversary which I would have thought would make it more sought-after.
The second A of Britanniar is strangely cut, apparently on purpose by the engraver. The left leg is about four times thicker than on a normal letter A, and no crossbar is obvious, although grime could be obscuring it. This letter actually looks very much like an inverted V, although the letter V would not be introduced in this series until the Bare Head version of George appeared in the latter part of 1825. There are many examples of sovereign dates in which an inverted letter A was substituted for V, or where the crossbar of letter A is missing which makes the letter seem like an inverted V. But I’m not aware of any reports of this being found on an 1822 sovereign. The left leg of this letter does not seem to be wide due to wear damage on the die, since the two sides of the leg look perfectly parallel as if deliberately engraved. Also, this letter does not show any evidence of re-punching several times which might tend to widen the left leg, since the right leg looks to be normal width.
As far as I know, no letter V in this ornate style of 1821 to early 1825 is known to exist. I'm wondering if perhaps this was an experimental die punch, with the possible intention of replacing IIII with IV a few years earlier than actually occurred, but they decided against that. It's possible that perhaps the mint tested the punch out on a few coins (like this one) just to see how it worked, or perhaps they just tossed it in with the other regular punches, and when the normal A punch wore out they substituted an inverted V.
Another possibility is that when a new font set is initially designed, the engraver produces a master set of punches that includes one of each numeral and letter of the alphabet. Although each punch is not currently required, they are always available in the future if the need arises. In this case, if the letter A punch happened to break at an inconvenient time during coin production, perhaps the mint director allowed the inverted and heretofore unused letter V punch to be substituted until a new letter A punch could be produced.
. Another very interesting feature is that the two letters N were obviously made with different letter punches, which can be seen in the upper left corner. At first this would seem to be a waste of time to produce two separate punches for the same letter on the same die, but it was probably the usual strategy in order to ensure that one letter punch getting multiple usage did not wear out faster than the others.
Just based on wear, this coin looks more like AU55, so I think it was seriously downgraded due to all the adhered grime on the surfaces, especially in the denticles. If this coin were conserved properly, I think it would re-grade much higher than XF45. To me, it has wonderful eye appeal, which I value far above any numerical grade.