If you wait long enough ....

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ColonialCoinsUK

Entry posted by ColonialCoinsUK ·

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It is nice to see people are making progress with their collections, despite other commitments my own collection is ticking over albeit very slowly. In the introduction to my Typeset of French Napoleonic Coinage I ended with 'The distinct prospect of finding that first, or elusive high grade example for a particular issue remains and makes every auction catalogue a potential source of a new discovery' and this situation probably holds true for the majority of older world coins, particularly minors. Even with the surge in Third Party Grading over the last few years the populations remain extremely low and for many date-runs a graded set is not even possible at this point. As a result I have submitted quite a few coins to NGC rather than wait for the rare, or non-existant, graded example to appear. It was therefore a surprise to see a 1808 10 centimes from the Limoges mint appear at a recent auction in NGC MS65.* Despite this issue having an intermediate mintage for the series - Le Franc 1,062,123 - my review of the population reports in 2017 (included in the introductory text to my 5 and 10 centimes Registry Set) highlighted only two graded examples, both PCGS and MS63, in addition there also appears to be little or no raw coins in mint state in the auction records which is supported by a lack of prices in both Le Franc and Gadoury for uncirculated coins. Even though I was not the only person to recognise the (conditonal) rarity of this coin I was fortunate to secure it and it now resides in my Registry Set.#

Despite this success there are no graded examples at all for many of the issues in this Set, and for that matter most of the sets I am interested in, with the possible exception of post-1816 British coinage, and sets are therefore being made up of raw coins. As a result I expect that I am not the only 'collector' of world coins that has ungraded examples which are probably, or close to, the 'best known' all the while hoping that a better example appears at some point as you have to believe the coin is out there!

* Some European auction houses have now taken to grading certain items as part of the sale process
# Fortunately I had the funds to take advantage of this opportunity however these were meant to be used for a camera so starting to understand coin photography has been somewhat delayed although I have ordered Mark Goodman's book!

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Revenant

I sympathize in that I'm starting to hit up against a brick wall with my Netherlands 10G set. I got very lucky with the 1887 and 1888 but the 1880, 1885 and 1886... they just haven't shown up already graded - in 10 years of looking. So now I'm getting close to the point of looking at other options.

Nice to see you posting again!

Hopefully the reading on photography yields good results for you. I recently bought a ring-light for my wife to use for live-streaming / web-based teaching and I'm tempted to steal it from her temporarily and see how it does with coin photography. :)

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deposito

You both are coyboys in the still wild west of getting world coins graded.  As long as you can handle, or don't care about, the big reveal when your coin comes back cleaned, hairlines, scratched, rims filed, brushed, etc., the joy of making a new top pop or close example is worth it.   Only once you have sent in enough apparently nice raw coins that they find problems with, you really can appreciate the ones that DON'T have problems.  Besides, some are still so scarce (to slabhood) that NGC doesn't have any examples at all besides your details-graded example.

 

Revenant are there really some 1880s dated gold dutch non-ducat coins that are not in the NGC/PCGS population at all but were minted? 

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Revenant
1 hour ago, deposito said:

 

Revenant are there really some 1880s dated gold dutch non-ducat coins that are not in the NGC/PCGS population at all but were minted? 

Pop 0? I'm not aware of any but can't rule it out.

The NGC pop for the 1888 10G is about 25 pieces. Combined with PCGS it's about 60 pieces between the top two companies. Which, compared to some things, is decently high.

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ColonialCoinsUK

Revenant, in terms of your 10G set it may be worth contacting Schulman (Holland) and Kunker (Germany) as they often have quality examples, particularly Schulman who may also be able to find one privately rather than through their auctions - likely to be raw coins though!

deposito, fortunately I have a very good record with submitting coins for grading, usually MS62-MS65, although I did deliberately submit a couple of coins which I knew had surface hairlines and would therefore get a 'details' grade but as these were extremely rare the authentication was far more valuable and it is likely that none of the handful known would get a full grade. For example I bought a coin yesterday which appears to the finest by far of the 3 examples that I am aware of (none graded at NGC or PCGS), once I have the coin in hand I will decide whether it would be worth sending to NGC or not - as I do with most of my collection I may just keep it as it is hoping that a better one may be found over the next couple of decades or so!

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Revenant
2 hours ago, ColonialCoinsUK said:

Revenant, in terms of your 10G set it may be worth contacting Schulman (Holland) and Kunker (Germany) as they often have quality examples, particularly Schulman who may also be able to find one privately rather than through their auctions - likely to be raw coins though!

I'll keep that in mind - posting about this myself soon actually... but... Yeah... They'll be raw unless I'm very lucky.

1880: 61 total graded by NGC

1885: 64 total graded by NGC

1886: 39 total graded by NGC

1879/7: 23 total graded by NGC - this one has never been part of my goal for the set because of relative rarity, but if I got a shot at one it could be fun.

I feel very lucky and grateful to have gotten my 1887 and 1888 already graded from US sellers - 59 and 25 graded by NGC respectively.

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