As my username would suggest I have a long standing interest in British colonial coinage, whilst the vast majority of my collection is made up of raw coins in VF I do occasionally improve to a graded example. I was therefore pleased to see a 1942 bronze penny from Southern Rhodesia in NGC MS63BN appear recently at Heritage,* as this was a lot at a weekly auction the estimate isn't usually added until the close of the preceeding weeks sale so I was very surprised when this was set as $20-$40. I say surprised as this is not only the key date penny for George VI but mint state examples seem to be scare to say the least and high grade examples are typically missing from British Colonial collections which usually settle for the proof version of the date.
Although there are three graded finer at NGC (65BN, 64RB and 64BN) with three others also reported in mint state (two tied at 63BN and one at 62RB) and only a total of two coins at PCGS (65BN and 64BN) I expect it will be a long time before some of these appear at auction as these make up more examples than are contained in the online auction records! Unfortunately I wasn't the only collector to realise the conditional rarity of this coin and I had to pay $85 (hammer) to secure it - which was just over double the top estimate but less than I expected to pay so I guess very few collectors in the UK were up at 3am in the morning. As a result, coupled with the fact that I was outbid in the Baldwin's sale of the Diana Collection in 2008,# I am more than happy to have this rather elusive penny fill another slot in my graded typeset for Southern Rhodesia.
* Pics are from Heritage as I haven't received the coin yet.
# I did pick up some nice sixpences though
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