Promoting Australian Half Sovereigns
Top End Coins recently assisted Token Publishing with Steve Hill’s excellent update to The Gold Sovereign, now in its 2nd edition. Assistance from passionate collectors and dealers of Australia’s scarcest circulating denomination resulted in seven new confirmed varieties being placed on the collector’s radar. I’d like to present the eighth variety. It’s a tentative double error; possibly G over C in REG and C over E in VICTORIA.
Sold as C over E
Although not a recognised variety from PCGS, a C struck over an apparent letter E is clearly visible in VICTORIA. In fact, I’d suggest that there are a number of Australian variants that PCGS isn’t tracking; perhaps indicative of the smaller collector base compared to the massive U.S pre-decimal market. As to the reason such an obvious lettering error occurred, a couple of reasons can be forwarded. Firstly, from The Sovereign (Hillden 2001, p.26):
“In 1848 William Wyon gave evidence before the Royal Mint Commission and said: ‘with respect to the dies, every die is perfected by the graver, re-lettered etc., and in fact made an original before it is hardened; so that, in case of a failure of the original matrix, a die could be converted into and used as a matrix, so as to obtain puncheons from it”.
What the Chief Engraver of the Royal Mint was intimating was that British die steel was not up to the engineering standard required to support the mass production of small denomination dies (think half sovereigns, sixpence and threepence). I say British die steel because I seem to recall that continental Europe had superior technology. This appears to be confirmed by Challis, with a tour of European Mints by new Royal Mint appointees in 1870 (1). They found the Royal Mint wanting for improved technology, precious metal assaying and – so it would appear – quality of die steel… (to be continued)
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