World Crowns Gems & Rarities (Crowns); Post Your Gem Crowns Here

That's a great story Paul. I had a similar situation with an ebay auction about an "unidentified thaler" that I knew to be extremely rare and very valuable. No one bid at all on the coin and that got me excited because I thought I could get a steal. Sadly, there were several other shrewd bidders that waited to the end to bid, the coin shot up from $10 to $1,000 within the last minute and sold at $4,000 (not to me) - not a bad price considering that the true value was probably between $6,000 to $8,000.

Anyway, as I mentioned I couldn't give you a good opinion on condition or value. I wasn't able to find any sales in the last few years and book values are generally useless with coins like this. Depending on which outlet you use to sell the coin and what kind of bidders are participating, you can get a wide range of prices. I personally wouldn't pay that kind of money because the coin doesn't appeal to me and doesn't fit the type of material I collect. That doesn't mean there isn't someone out there that wouldn't pay a nice premium for it. I have participated in several Varesi auctions and followed many more, and from my observations, their estimates are usually on the conservative side. His price range of 1,000-2,000 EUR clearly demonstrates the amount of uncertainty he has about the valuation. One thing is certain, if this coin is indeed authentic and you paid 171£ for it... you got a STEAL! Congrats.

What I don't understand is why don't you submit for grading? Clearly this is a coin that would benefit from a slab (unless of course it is not authentic).

cableguy815 There's one big favor I have to ask you, and that would be to check some previous sales for a 1645 GN,Frankfurt thaler.I don't have access to coinarchivespro and as far I remember I think you said you had a subscription, so if it'd be possible i'd be very grateful!I only managed to find one on coinshome and I'm pretty sure there were more in the last couple of years!Thanks!

Beautiful!

PaulCT, I did some digging for 1645 Frankfurt thalers and found a few bits. There have been several sales and several listings that failed to sell.

This one sold in 2014 for 480EUR


This one sold in 2008 for 5,200EUR; interestingly it is listed as DAV 5294 instead of 5295


I also came across your sample. It looks like it failed to sell at WAG this past December with a start of 150EUR. Is that correct? Catalogue shows this coin at 6,000 in VF so I'm a little surprised it didn't sell. Even at the condition that it's in, it should have sold.

I did some more digging for other years and found this one failing to sell for 675EUR


Then there are a few other instances of low grade 44s and 46s failing to sell in the 300-400EUR range.

Granted these years are less valuable than the 45, they should have still sold at those levels. The only conclusion I am able to draw is that the market doesn't agree with the book values for this particular coin set and doesn't price them as highly.

Wow, you guys have some serious gems, not exactly my field (I don't go further than 1800s), but that 1747 2 speciadaler is a beast!

Here's one of my scarcest coins, that I snatched out of ebay for a good price, where it was mislabelled.

Chile 1867 1 peso, nicknamed "Pechugon". That's a holy grail of Chilean coinage. Only a small amount was minted (all soft strikes) before the popular Un peso or "Aguila" design was introduced the same year and used until 1894.

@dulitu Holy moly. I never knew of the distinction. I haven't branched out to South American crowns... still banging away at Europe - haha.

Do you have any estimates of how many of these were minted?

dulitu Congrats!Nice one!19 Century has some great crowns too!

Thanks all for the nice words!


No idea! Could not find any info on the mintage anywhere so far.. But they don't surface that often so I assume there could be less than a thousand surviving pieces.

Here's another crown, also 1867, but from another side of the world:
Hong Kong 1 dollar 1867/6 (scarce overdate). The story behind this one: a few years ago I saw it on the catalog of a small auction house with a very low estimate of 90 euros, mislabelled as being 1867 (no mention of overdate). They did not have online bidding option at the time so I went to the auction myself on one hand hoping to grab this coin, but on the other hand scared there might be some crazy asian bidders (I often see them making insane bids on Chinese coins in local auctions). Luckily I haven't spotted any of them in the hall and won this coin with almost no competition for only 180 euros (way less than I was actually willing to bid for it). Seeing that this particular piece in similar grade sometimes sells for over 4000$ on major auctions, thats a huge steal :)