Sovereign Rarities proudly present their 19th Auction to be held at their London officeon Tuesday 23rd September in conjunction with the Royal Mint. The online catalogueis now available to view at www.sovr.co.uk with images and estimates of every lot.

The sale commences with the magnificent Thorburn Collection of coins of 1887mostly struck for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. This collection consists ofover 200 coins arranged in 198 lots to begin the auction and covers everythingnumismatic from the Royal Mint medallions for the Jubilee and all the denominationsin use for 1887 from the senior gold Five Pounds to the more lowly bronze Farthingas well as many patterns and proofs produced at the time for Adolph Weyl, J.Rochelle Thomas and Spink. The sale now has its own pdf flipbook with all relevantintroductory passages at this link SOVR Auction XIX - Featuring the Thorburn Collection - Flip Book Catalogue

Focusing on the silver denominations one of the most significant items is the silverproof set of all the coins from Crown to Threepence which contains a more unusualdie variation of Halfcrown, Florin, and Shilling than the usual proofs seen of this date,as explained in the extensive cataloguing notes. There are also individual high gradeexamples of all these silver denominations in both currency and proof throughout thecollection with other die variances. Examples below:

The Thorburn Collection of 1887 is perhaps most notable though for the presence of19 different Pattern Sixpences made for Spink and Son and J. Rochelle Thomas byLauer of Bavaria. This intriguing series was made in a small quantity and hasbecome highly collectible since for its variation in design, metals used and varianceof edges. Never have so many been offered for sale in one auction opportunity. Theonly other comprehensive assemblage of these patterns was in the Alfred BoleCollection sold over three sales circa 2010 from where a number of these exampleswere purchased. The catalogue explains the story and variance in a lot more detail.

The Thorburn Collection closes with the patterns prepared for dealer Adolph Weylalso manufactured by Lauer of Bavaria made in an even more limited quantity thanthose above. The trial piece in lead above shows three dates on the obverse side asa sample striking to show how the aesthetic of date insertion would look physically.This coin is unique.

The sale then continues into the general properties Ancient to modern with AncientBritish, Anglo-Saxon and Norman, as well as Mediaeval including Irish, gold andsilver from the Tudor period to modern day. The 1935 gold Crown for the SilverJubilee is the key lot featured two weeks back.

One of the highlights is an Anglo-Gallic Edward III gold Leopard D'Or graded byPCGS as AU58 at £10,000-12,000. Always an interesting animal design from thismedieval gothic era of coinage. There will be a final selection of highlights on nextweek's E-Sylum.

The sale takes place at Sovereign Rarities on 23rd September as a live auction withonline bidding.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
1935 GEORGE V SILVER JUBILEE CROWN IN GOLD(https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n35a16.html)
SOVEREIGN RARITIES AUCTION XIX(https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n36a20.html)