Lot 189
The finest known
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Literature:
- 355 Medium:
- Collectibles Circa:
- Coins, Monies & Stamps Notes:
- It is quite easy for a dealer or auction house to claim that a coin is the finest known if they are acting as the sole adjudicator. 'Industry experts' can stand with their hands pressed to their hearts and 'truthfully' proclaim that the coin they are selling is by far the best that they have handled but, does that really satisfy the criteria for claiming the ultimate accolade? Over the years many coins from famous collections have sold at extraordinary prices due to their impeccable pedigree but, again does the chimera of a past owner, usually of obscure historical import, really improve a coin's state of preservation? Like today, historical collections only contain the coins that were then available and so a pedigree is not necessarily a guarantee of quality. As now, it didn't matter how rich or powerful you were if the coins were not around to purchase and, even if they were, how were they then preserved through the years. Recently 'one of the finest known' Holey Dollars was sold at auction for hundreds of thousands of dollars even though it appeared to have been recently cleaned and retoned. And, the writer notes that even the lauded 'Quartermaster Collection' of Australian Gold coins contained many rarities that had been cleaned, but which still sold at extraordinary prices on the strength of their pedigree. When coins are judged on condition it needs to be a like-for-like comparison and, like it or not this means relying increasingly on the judgement of recognised third-party grading services. These services are far from perfect but, every year collectors are sending more high-grade coins to them to pigeon-hole into the various Mint State grades. You can track the steady stream of coins that have been submitted for grading by going to the census population reports of the two major third-party services, NGC and PCGS. Take for example the Australian Type II Adelaide £1 of which 16 coins have been sent to NGC and 51 to PCGS. This represents a fair sampling of the surviving mintage, and the highest grade that has so far been achieved is MS65. Does that mean that a coin graded in MS65 in a third-party holder then qualifies as the finest known? Well I guess that is for the market to judge but it would appear to have a stronger basis in fact than other pretenders to the title.
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| From: | To: | Increments: |
|---|---|---|
| A$0 | A$99 | A$5 |
| A$100 | A$999 | A$10 |
| A$1,000 | A$4,999 | A$50 |
| A$5,000 | A$9,999 | A$100 |
| A$10,000 + | A$250 |