Selling sovereigns without losing the premium

01

What a sovereign is, and which weight to use

The sovereign is a British gold coin struck in 22 carat alloy. The Coinage Act 1971 sets its standard weight at 7.98805 g and its fineness at 916.66, which The Royal Mint quotes rounded as 7.98 g and 916.7. That makes 7.32238 g of fine gold, or 0.2354 troy ounces. The half sovereign is 3.99402 g at the same fineness, holding 3.66119 g. Because 916.7 is 22 parts in 24 rounded to one decimal place, 7.32238 g is the number to use rather than the gross weight multiplied by 0.9167.

Coins carry no hallmark, and the Hallmarking Act exempts them. Their standard is fixed by law rather than certified piece by piece. A scrap buyer who works only from the scale and a surface test is treating the coin as an unmarked 22ct bangle, when its content is already known to five decimal places.

Gross weight

The full weight of the coin as struck, 7.98805 g for a sovereign. Decades of handling wear it down a little.

Fine weight

The pure gold inside the coin, 7.32238 g. It is the figure the trade quotes, and it is fixed by the coin's legal standard rather than found by testing.

Bullion sovereign

An ordinary-date sovereign in circulated condition, wanted for its gold and for being a recognised coin, rather than for scarcity.

Numismatic sovereign

A sovereign whose date, mint, type or condition gives it a collector value above its bullion value, sometimes far above.

Premium

The extra a coin commands over the gold in it, because it is a known unit that needs no testing. It moves with supply, demand and condition, and it is smaller when you are selling than when you are buying.

Assaypost buys full and half sovereigns of any date. The gold coins and sovereigns page sets out what is accepted and how coins are handled differently from jewellery.

02

Why a bullion sovereign is worth more than its gold

A broken chain has to be weighed, tested and refined before anyone knows what it holds. A sovereign does not. Its weight and fineness are published, every dealer knows the design on sight, and it can be passed to the next buyer as a coin rather than as metal. Each of those removes a cost and a risk for whoever is buying, and the coin market reflects that.

• No assay is needed. A sovereign that is what it appears to be holds 7.32238 g of fine gold, and the buyer knows that before it is weighed.
• It can be resold as a coin. A dealer passes it on to an investor or a collector without melting it, so the dealer is competing for a coin rather than for scrap metal.
• It is a small unit. Sovereigns are bought in ones and twos, which keeps demand steady and the market liquid.
• The minting cost has already been paid. Striking a coin costs money, and that cost is recovered in the premium for as long as the coin stays a coin.

The premium is not fixed. It narrows when many sovereigns are being sold, widens when they are scarce, and is smaller on the selling side than the buying side because a dealer needs a margin. What matters to you is the direction. Treating a sovereign as an unmarked 22ct bangle throws away the one thing that makes it a sovereign, and no weighing of it can put that back.

03

Dates, mints and conditions that may carry collector value

The categories below are the ones most likely to lift a sovereign out of bullion pricing. Treat the list as a screen rather than a valuation. Only a specialist with the coin in hand can confirm whether it is scarce and what it would fetch, and Assaypost does not publish collector prices because they change with each sale and depend on grading that cannot be done from a photograph.

• Branch-mint sovereigns struck before 1933. Sovereigns were also struck in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Ottawa, Bombay and Pretoria. These carry a small mint-mark letter, usually on the ground line above the date on a St George reverse or beneath the shield on a shield reverse. Some year-and-mint combinations were struck in small numbers.
• Victoria portraits. Victoria's sovereigns fall into three portrait types: the young head, the jubilee head introduced in 1887 and the veiled or old head from 1893. Within each type, particular years and mints are scarcer than others.
• Shield reverses. Earlier Victorian sovereigns carry the royal arms in a shield rather than St George and the dragon. Shield-reverse coins from the Australian mints attract particular interest.
• Proof and specimen strikings. Coins struck with polished dies for presentation or sets have mirrored fields and sharp detail. They were never meant to circulate and are priced as collector pieces.
• Low-mintage years. Some ordinary circulation years had short runs. The date alone does not settle this; the mint mark and the type have to be read together.
• Condition. A coin with full original detail and lustre is a different proposition from the same date worn smooth. Wear also takes the gross weight below the struck 7.98805 g, so there is less gold in a tired coin as well as less interest in it.

04

How coins are sorted before any pricing

Loose coins are sorted away from jewellery at the start of every assessment, because the first question is not what the coin weighs but what the coin is. That sorting happens before any scrap pricing, and a coin set in a mount stays in it.

1. Send photographs first if you would rather know before postingClear photographs of both faces, taken in daylight without flash, let the assessor read the date, portrait, reverse type and any mint mark while the coin is still in your house. Use the photo estimate route for this.
2. Identification on receiptEach coin is logged with its date, portrait type, reverse type and mint mark, then weighed to 0.01 g and compared with the standard weight. A weight well below 7.98805 g is noted as wear or as a prompt to test whether the coin is what it claims to be.
3. A flag before any pricingAny coin in one of the categories above, or in unusually fine condition, is flagged on its line of the item list, with the reason written in plain words. You are told before any coin is priced as metal (clause 4.4 of the terms).
4. Your decision before anything is processedA flagged coin is never sent for refining until you have seen the note and told us what you want to do. Ask for it back and it comes back by free tracked post, for a coin dealer or an auction house to look at. If your offer has already been made, you are sent a fresh written offer for the rest, and the first offer stays open on its original terms while you decide (clause 6.3 of the terms). The gold coins and sovereigns page sets out how coins are handled differently from the rest of a parcel.

05

Reading your own coin in five minutes

You do not need to be a numismatist to put a sovereign into roughly the right pile. Four things on the coin do most of the work, and all four are readable with a phone camera and daylight.

1. The reverseTurn the coin to the side without the monarch. St George on horseback with a dragon is the common design. A crowned shield of royal arms instead means a Victorian coin from before the late 1880s, a type collectors look for.
2. The mint markOn a St George reverse, look for a single small letter on the ground line, just above the date. On a shield reverse it sits below the shield. S, M, P, C, I and SA are the overseas branch mints. No letter means the coin was struck by the Royal Mint in Britain.
3. The portraitVictoria appears as a young head, then a jubilee head from 1887, then a veiled or old head from 1893. Edward VII, George V, George VI and Elizabeth II each have their own. The portrait plus the date plus the mint mark is what a specialist actually looks up.
4. The surfaceHold the coin at an angle to a window. Mirror-like fields and very sharp detail suggest a proof or specimen striking, which was never meant to circulate. Even, soft wear suggests an ordinary coin that has had a long life.
5. Then stopDo not clean it, do not rub it, do not put it in a dip. Photograph both faces and leave it exactly as it is. A well-meant polish is one of the commonest ways a collectable coin is spoiled.

Having read those four things, you know whether you are holding something ordinary or something that deserves a specialist opinion. If there is a branch mint letter, a shield reverse, a Victorian portrait, an unusual date or a proof-like surface, that opinion is worth getting before anything is posted anywhere.

A half sovereign reads the same way and carries 3.66119 g of fine gold against the full sovereign's 7.32238 g, again from the legal standard. Collector interest in halves does not simply track interest in fulls, so read the half on its own terms rather than assuming it is worth half of whatever the full one is.

06

Seller risks and exceptions

• Coins weighed in with the jewellery. Some buyers tip the whole parcel onto one scale and treat the lot as metal. Ask for each coin to have its own line, with the date, the reverse type and any mint mark written on it.
• Mount damage. A sovereign soldered into a pendant mount or a ring usually shows solder on the rim and loses collector interest even once it is freed. The gold in it is untouched; ask for the mount to be listed separately from the coin.
• Worn coins. Long circulation takes a sovereign below its standard weight of 7.98805 g, and the Coinage Act 1971 sets a least current weight of 7.93787 g below which a coin has lost more than the law allows. Ask for the measured weight to be recorded beside the standard, so you can see how much of the coin has gone.
• Copies and gilded pieces. Sovereign copies exist in base metal and in lower-fineness gold. Weight, diameter and a density check catch most of them, while a surface X-ray fluorescence (XRF) reading on its own can be fooled by gilding. See the XRF testing guide.
• Grading is not free. A specialist sale involves fees and waiting, and for a worn common-date sovereign it may not pay. That is why the flag records a reason rather than promising a higher figure.
• A rough idea is not an offer. Anything said from photographs is said without the coin in hand; the date, the mint mark and the condition are all read properly only when it arrives, and a worn or mounted coin can look better in a picture than it is.

07

When not to use the scrap route

This route suits a sovereign only when it is a common date in circulated condition and you have already asked a coin dealer what they would give for it. That comparison, not a comparison with jewellery, is the right one. If a coin is flagged here, take the free return and get the comparison before you decide. It costs you nothing but a little time, and it is the most useful thing a sovereign owner can do.