Sovereign Errors

[Asketi]

Hi All,

I know many of the members here are from the US, and that there is a focus on US Coinage but I thought it would be interesting to post a few closeups of British Victorian Sovereign errors that I have in my collection.

Happy to post more photos of these wonderful coins if there is interest. Equally if anyone needs Sovereign advice please feel free to ask!

Best
Asketim

[Triple C]

Very cool! I would be interested in seeing more, but can you please include full images of obverse and reverse on your next posts. Thanks for sharing!

[Asketi]

Hello and thanks for replying.

Very Happy to do so. Give me a little time and I will take photos and link to the errors with a description.

All the best from the UK!

[Clint W]

would love to see more photos. Those are some pretty wild DDOs

[Mojave Gold]

Agree with above - I would love to see more details of errors. I have a handful of Sovereigns, mostly from the London mint, but some from Sydney, Melborne, Canada and Bombay. I collect them mainly because they are cool - but it can't be too bad to have some of the same coins in my collection that James Bond carries around with him! I had never even considered the possibility of errors...

[Asketi]

Excellent and thank you for your feedback. I will post up the first Sovereign Error with decent pictures over the weekend / Monday.

In total there have been over a billion Sovereigns minted (Since Queen Victoria - 1838 onwards, my count based on reliable records is 1,083,190,348 across all mints).

There are, however nothing like this number surviving:
- Worn Sovereigns were melted and re-minted
- Many were melted in the UK to be cast into Bars to pay foreign debts
- Notably, 104,960 1838 Sovereigns were shipped to the US and melted to fund the creation of the Smithsonian museum (they were re-minted into %10 Eagles in Philadelphia). I have attached a photo of a Sovereign held at the Smithsonian that may have been part of the 104,960
- Some still sit at the bottom of the ocean on wrecked ships
- There are likely to be a few hoards sitting unsorted in bank vaults

Sovereigns were minted in:
- London
- Sydney
- Melbourne
- Ottowa
- Bombay (one year only)

The vast majority were bullion finish but proofs and 'patterns' were also minted, but are rare.

With so many minted, and Sovereign design variations there was ample room for errors to creep in. Many are recorded in the Book 'The Gold Sovereign' by Michael Marsh (Latest edition 2021), but I have found ones not recorded in this central reference book.

Best
Asketi

[Asketi]

Here is the Photo from the Smithsonian