Grading the Gold Sovereign

I hope you have arrived here after reading the first part of this article.

In this part, I will be showing you some more examples of the dubious and the downright ugly that at some time have been passed off as coins.

The first example is very interesting: Please check Picture No 1

The obverse is clearly very crudely engraved, though the reverse is a bit better and the reverse on its own might have fooled someone. Sadly, the seller - who did withdraw the coin from eBay - was duped himself and bought the coin in good faith from a coin fair. This shows the value of good photographs and of being able to see pictures of both sides of the coin.

Here is something I noticed yesterday - 22 August 2008: Please check picture No 2

The seller was offering this as a sovereign and has told me that the reverse is of George and the dragon. However, this obverse appears to be that of the half sovereign and there is no picture of the reverse. The seller took the picture from someone else's listing and subsequently put up the following poor picture: Please check picture No 3

This appears to be a fairly low grade bullion coin but it also appears to be a single photo showing both sides of the coin!

The learning points from this example are that you should never buy a coin without seeing pictures of the reverse and obverse and never buy a coin on the basis of a purloined photo - the one thing that will be certain is that the actual coin will not be the same as the one pictured and may be in worse condition.

Here is a very interesting one from ebay Please check Picture No 4