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It appears to be little known, but there are date varieties on both the shield and St George reverse sovereigns of 1873. A picture says a thousand words, so instead of describing the varieties, we hav...

When I was younger, I was given an old Renniks catalogue from the 1970s. Before the internet, price guides were often the only way to learn about all aspects of coins collecting, such as what to colle...

We are asked this question a lot, and there are so many factors that go into the value of a gold sovereign that tomes could be written about it. Fortunately, when a non-collector asks how much their s...

PCGS offers a number of different services besides basic grading and encapsulation. One of their most popular services is their photography service, run by professional photographer Phil Arnold. Phil ...

Like the Edward VII sovereign series, the veiled head (or old head) sovereigns are popular, owing to their affordability and general availability. They are also the last of the Victorian sovereigns, a...

The blank ponds (or Kaal ponds) were manufactured in Pretoria some time around 1900 in the midst of the South African War (Second Boer War), and are in effect unfinished gold ponds. While historical r...

Across almost every Australian coin series, there are unanswered numismatic questions. Whether the questions arose from poor record keeping, botchy die punching, bad policy, experimentation, or someth...

I have just got in a large supply of the new matte black PCGS boxes. These are second-hand, but are in pretty good condition, otherwise. These hard, plastic boxes can hold twenty PCGS-graded holders, ...

The Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) is the largest coin grading company in the world, and with over 35 million coins graded over its 30 year history, more and more Australian collectors want ...

While all pennies and halfpennies are worth something in the highest grades, most of these copper coins are practically worthless and sell by the kilo in bags to scrap dealers. Pennies are generally w...

The Edward VII sovereign series has always been a popular one for collectors. Big enough to be challenging, but small enough to build in a few years, it has appeal to both connoisseur collector and be...

I am going to tell you a story, or rather some stories. It is from my experiences throughout my (relatively short in relation to my age) career in numismatics.

There are a lot of sovereign rarities across the George V sovereign series. There are about a dozen major rarities from the 1920s to 1930s, as well as handful minor ones. Key dates like the 1923SA cur...

On the 17th May 2020, one of the oldest and most comprehensive sets of sovereigns on the PCGS Set Registry sold under the hammer in Texas, United States. Called the Caranett Collection, this award-win...

The gold sovereign is one of the most widely-recognised and sought-after gold coins in the world. Their historic appeal makes the gold sovereign ideal collection items. But not all gold sovereigns are...

Like it or not—and, yes, I am not anti-slab, but I am also quite comfortable with it—some significant element of our industry finds slabbing useful. So I think it behoves me to define some terms n...

Mint marks are small letters struck on a gold sovereigns that identify its origin. If you are a coin collector, knowing about these marks is essential. A mint mark not only tells the collector where t...

In 2006, the Royal Australian Mint accidentally issued a number of proof sets with a 2005-dated dollar coin. The reverse of this coin bore the standard Kangaroo design (known as the “mob of ‘roos�...

When assessing a coin, the first thing I do is look at the coin in hand from about an arm’s length away. I’ll rotate the coin, allowing the light to catch it at various angles. I’ll feel the rim...

Somehow people’s vision when you use the word “cleaning” is getting a wire brush and giving your 1930 penny a good spruce up. Cleaning to me is removing the crud that has accumulated on the face...

Although I’ve lived in Sydney all my life, I’ve never found the time to visit the Reserve Bank of Australia Coin and Banknote Museum next to Martins Place. I had a few hours spare just before Chri...

It isn’t widely known, but the 1881 Melbourne and 1882 Sydney shield sovereigns come in two distinct varieties. The first type has a pointy tip on the truncation while the second type has a round ti...

The Sydney Money Expo is on again. If you’re in Sydney on the weekend of the 26th and 27th October, come down to the Sydney Town Hall on Druitt St, where Sydney’s largest coin fair will be held.

If you're in Sydney at the end of September, why don't you drop by the Petersham Super Fair. With 28 dealers from all over the country wheeling and dealing, there's sure to be something for everyone.

Once again, we'll be at Coinex next month. This year, it's back at its original location, in the Ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel Mayfair Gardens, Grosvenor Square, London. If you happen to be in London...

Photographed below, a very special 1957 Perth penny in PCGS PR64RD. There are two types: 1) the common type, struck in 1959, which has the finish of a 1959 proof penny, and 2) the rare type, which was...

Perth is one of my favourite Australian cities, but I don’t often get the chance to head over there. Earlier this year, I was there for the Perth Money Expo and took the opportunity to visit the wor...

It was another fantastic ANA World’s Fair of Money, held this year in Rosemont, just outside of Chicago, Illinois. With thousands of dealers in attendance from all over the world, “the ANA”, as ...

Well, after months of hard work and development, Version 4.0 of the new Drake Sterling site has gone live. We hope that you enjoy the modern styling and enhanced image quality, as well as the new and ...

Last year, British gold dealer Paul Davis identified a variety on the 2002 proof two pound piece. While both reverse and obverse are identical, the edge milling is different on a small number of piece...

Last October, we visited the birthplace of almost all of the United Kingdom’s native coins, the Royal Mint in Wales. We weren’t allowed to take images on the factory floor, but the adjoining museu...

The 3rd Annual Adelaide Coin Show was held last weekend on the 17th and 18th November. The first show was held in 2016 and it has just got better with age. Between purchases, I managed to sneak a few ...

The Royal Mint issued five pound pieces in 1902 in proof and for circulation. Both versions of this coin are widely collected, but unlike most years where a proof version exists, the circulation strik...

I was reading a great coin article by Philip McLoughlin in the Coin News magazine this month about some of George Kruger-Gray’s alternative designs for Australia’s new coinage in 1938. If you have...

The mint made 72 million small head 2004 twenty cent pieces in 2004, but just 400,000 examples of the large head version. For this reason, many collectors conclude that the small head is far more comm...

Move over Canberra florin, the Gothic Crown must be the world's most beautiful coin. Issued in 1847 and 1853, both dates are popular with collectors. There are several different varieties of the 1847,...

The British Indian mohurs of the 1830s and 1840s bore a masculine rendition of a stalking lion in front of a palm tree. It's a beautiful design that was later used on the logo of the Reserve Bank of I...

The Perth Coin and Stamp coin was held on 7th to 9th July at the South Perth Community Centre. Although I wasn’t able to attend personally, collector Jenny Ensbey was able to provide some live shots...

Coin collectors from Hong Kong were spoiled for choice in April with two coin shows in one weekend, held in adjoining hotels, about two hundred metres apart. While a single show would have been enough...

The 2017 Numismata München was held in Bavaria on the 4th and 5th March 2017. Numismata is one of the oldest coin shows in Germany, and is held all across the country and parts of Austria at various ...

They've taken some time to track down, but the 2016 "I" mintmark sovereigns are here. These were minted in Delhi on behalf of the Royal Mint, London. They are from the first series of sovereigns minte...

Not having been to South Korea before, I took the opportunity to visit some of the coin shops in the area we were staying. As it turns out, there was an entire underground shopping area dedicated to c...

The Adelaide Coin Show was held on the 3rd and 4th of December in the Drill Hall just outside Adelaide CBD. For those who happened to have missed out, I’ve taken a few photos of the weekend’s proc...

It’s been a while since I’ve done an ANDA Money Expo, so it was with some excitement that I packed my bags and made my way across town to the Sydney Town Hall. It took about an hour to set up, but...

The ANA World’s Fair of Money was held at the Anaheim Convention Center over five days between the 9th and 13th August 2016 and it coincided with the 125th anniversary of the formation of the ANA fo...

Last month, PCGS launched a series of educational videos to help collectors learn how PCGS assesses coins. It’s an eight-part series, with each video being about five or six minutes long. I’ve onl...

The show was held in the Crystal Ballroom in the Holiday Inn, Kowloon, from April 8th to the 10th, 2016. Spanning the entire length of the large carpeted room, as well as a filling the entire anteroom...

Two weeks ago, I had the honour of attending the Royal Australian Mint’s 50th anniversary celebrations of decimal currency. It was a big day, with exhibits, shows, cheap food, costumed mascots, and ...

I don’t often go to Perth, but when I do, it’s the weekend of the Perth ANDA Coin Show. This year has seen a new spin on this popular coin show, with new activities for the kiddies, no entrance fe...

In May 2015, a 1920-S sovereign sold at auction for £480,000 (or about AU$940,000 at the then exchange rate). It is finest of the three or four known examples, struck in specimen condition, and carri...

It’s been about nine years since I first saw a cabinet full of Australian PCGS-graded coins at a local coin show. The year was 2007, and my first thought was that ACGS (Australia’s professional co...

I was in London last week for the Coinex Coin Show 2015. If you missed it, here are some snaps I took of the two-day event. The venue: The Millennium Hotel, Mayfair, London. The Millennium Hotel has s...

It was another good Petersham Coin Show last Sunday 30th August 2015. Although train services were suspended for the day, a good number of collectors managed to come in and drop by. If you were there,...

In what is turning out to be an annual event, MMTC Pamp, under licence from the Royal Mint, has issued the latest addition to the popular Indian sovereign series. Minting of the 2015 issue appears to ...

I’ve just picked up a nice run of early threepences in high grade. Included in the group are scarcer dates such as the 1912, 1916M, and 1940, as well as high-grade examples of more common dates, suc...

There’s a lot of confusion around the obverse varieties of the Jubilee head sovereign. Everyone from the coin dealers, collectors, authors, and even PCGS have made attribution errors in their public...

It’s not every day that I get to attend an international coin event, so when I heard about a small coin show in Nagoya, Japan while holidaying in Tokyo last January, I couldn’t stop myself from ho...

It’s not the first time that someone has wondered what stories could be told if only coins could talk. An ancient gold aureus might have once belonged to Julius Caesar; or perhaps it was that hammer...

It’s been two years since I’ve been to Perth, but I haven’t forgotten how much I had enjoyed the trip there the first time, so when the dates for the ANDA Coin Show were set, I booked my flights...

I have a small quantity of second-hand PCGS boxes for sale available at $18 each inclusive of domestic shipping, limit three per person. These sturdy, hard plastic storage boxes can be neatly stacked ...

Proof coins with highly reflective, mirror-like fields can be described as either cameo (abbreviated to “CAM” on the PCGS certificate) or deep cameo (abbreviated to “DCAM”). CAM and DCAM refer...

Here is a selection of images from the 2014 Coinex Coin Show, which was held in London on the 26th and 27th of September 2014. Coinex Coin Show. The main entrance hall to the venue, the Millennium Hot...

Here’s a selection of images from the 2014 Sydney ANDA Coin Show, which was held on Friday and Saturday the 24th and 25th of October. Sydney ANDA ShowThe main aisle of the show. The Royal Australia ...

On the way back from Europe last month, a collector friend of mine had a stopover in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. While there, he dropped by one of the local Gold souqs (or markets) with the inten...

If you’re from Sydney and have been collecting coins for longer than twelve months, you’d have heard about the Petersham Coin Show. Although it’s not as glamorous as the annual ANDA Coin Shows, ...

Unlike previous years, the Melbourne ANDA Coin Show was held at the Dallas Brooks Centre just off Victoria Parade on the edge of Melbourne’s CBD. I arrived early, a few minutes before doors opened, ...

Hot off the dies are the Royal Mint’s latest issues from India. Following on from last year’s success, the Mint, in partnership with MMTC-PAMP, has issued gold sovereigns for the year 2014, all ma...

I currently have a small quantity of second-hand blue PCGS boxes for sale. They are available for $18 each including domestic shipping, limit two per person. If you’ve been looking for storage for y...

It’s been a long time coming, but PCGS now recognises the very popular 2000 millennium fifty cent incused flag variety.

I haven’t visited the Easter Show RAM mobile press in years, but as I was in the area last week, I thought I’d drop by and say hello.

The Singapore International Coin Fair is held every year at the end of March in one of Singapore’s premier hotels, Marina Bay Sands. As one of the biggest coin shows in the Asia-Pacific region, the ...

The subject of confirming if a George V penny has a London or Indian obverse, to the non-enthusiast, may seem trivial. However, when the outcome of this distinction may make hundreds or thousands of d...

The most famous mule coin observed in the pre-decimal series is the 1916-I halfpenny, where an Indian Quarter Anna obverse die was paired with an Australian Commonwealth halfpenny reverse. The planche...

If you collect 2000 one dollar mule coins, look no further. I just picked up an example of this popular coin graded PCGS MS64—the equal-finest graded by PCGS to date. The coin has full lustre, great...

Fairly current examples of these first two categories spring to mind are the $2 fake coins that appeared a couple of years ago and date altered pre-decimal coins such as 1923 halfpennies and 1930 penn...

Last October 2013, while on a coin buying trip to the United Kingdom, I had the opportunity to visit two coin exhibits at the Tower of London. The first exhibit, called Coins and Kings: The Royal Mint...

Most collectors are familiar with the Dansco press-in album. For those who aren’t, the Dansco press-in album was a type of coin album collectors used to build coin sets. The album was made of cardbo...

Over the last fifteen years, the number of Australian sovereign errors I’ve seen can be counted on two hands, so when I was offered the opportunity to acquire an 1872 Melbourne shield sovereign that...

Like London itself, the Coinex Coin Show, held in the Kingdom’s capital each September, was a hive of activity. Although the sky the morning of the show was full of clouds, not one of the clouds was...

Of all the coin shows held throughout the year, the ANDA Sydney show has always been my favourite. This year, the show was held on the 14th and 15th of September right in the heart of Sydney’s CBD. ...

Last week, when I listed for sale a 1942-I halfpenny with the long denticles on the reverse, I got a number of emails requesting more information about this variety. Although I had uploaded a large im...

I had the unfortunate displeasure of advising a collector that four of his gold sovereigns were in fact fakes or counterfeits. I have uploaded images of these fake gold coins below so that other colle...

If you’ve collected gold sovereigns for long enough, chances are you’ve encountered a fake sovereign or two. Like their real counterparts, these fake coins resemble the real thing: They often bear...

I'm often asked about PCGS’ new Secure Plus service, which was introduced in 2010. Any collector who’s seen more than a handful of PCGS holders (also known as “slabs”) would have noticed on th...

In an ideal world, we’d trade coins face-to-face over coffee. I’d bring along my coins, which you—the collector—would diligently assess, one-by-one. With a loupe and a bright light, you could ...