By Jay Turner - October 14, 2024
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Australia Adelaide 1852 Pound Type-1B, PCGS MS61. Courtesy of PCGS.
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By the 1850s, gold rushes had transformed many areas of the world. The idea of filling your pockets with gold from the ground and rivers fueled the dreams of people who rushed to regions with newly reported discoveries in the hopes of striking it rich. In the United States, such gold rushes in Georgia and California dramatically transformed the country.
For Australia, worldwide news of gold discoveries there came shortly after California’s with gold turning up in New South Wales, Victoria, and Western Australia. In a short period of time, Australia would be transformed by this gold rush, seeing the population increase from 430,000 people to 1,700,000 in less than 20 years. The gold rush also birthed the country’s first gold coins.
With the discovery of gold, the need for many support systems was required, including an assayer’s office. To accomplish this, Bullion Act No 1 of 1852 was passed on January 28, 1852, giving local legality to opening the office a short 13 days later – February 10, 1852. The office’s objective was to take gold from the Victoria gold fields, smelt it, and cast the gold into ingots.
By 1852, the Adelaide government passed new legislation authorizing the Adelaide Assay Office to strike coins with this gold for use by businesses in Adelaide and elsewhere. The coinage was not authorized by the British Government or Queen Victoria, yet it still was struck. Striking coins is much more difficult than making ingots. Coining duties ultimately fell on the able shoulders of Joshua Payne, an engraver and die sinker who created the design and dies for this new gold coinage.
The design was a crown at the center above the date “1852,” within denticles designed around a beaded circle; “GOVERNMENT ASSAY OFFICE” and “ADELAIDE” inscriptions run along the outside ring of the obverse of the coin. The reverse features “VALUE ONE POUND” in the center of three rings with the center beaded, and “WEIGHTS DWT: 15 GRS:” and “22 CARATS” ride around the outer ring design on the reverse. A new reverse die design replaced the three circles, with a denticle design on the reverse matching that of the obverse.
The first type of design with the beaded inner circle is a numismatic rarity with a mintage as low as 50 examples. This would be Australia’s first gold coin. The first 600 coins produced by the Adelaide Assay Office were delivered to the Australian Banking Company, which sent 100 of them to London. While a total of 24,648 coins were struck, only a small number were used in commerce. When it was discovered that the gold content was more valuable than the face value of one pound, many of these coins were simply melted down for their gold, making any survivor today a rarity.
In 2024, an example of an Adelaide Assay Office pound was submitted to the PCGS office in Hong Kong. This example was the first design type known as variety Type-1B. It is believed that as few as 20 examples of the mintage of 50 may have survived. This example was the third such specimen of this type graded by PCGS. Selling in a Nobel Numismatic PTY LTD auction in November 2023, this coin brought $110,000AUD, or about $72,000USD, without buyers’ commission. This coin had a prior pedigree, having been sold in March 1981 by Spink Australia for $45,000AUD. The coin was graded MS61 by PCGS, making it currently the finest example encapsulated by PCGS.
Article provided by PCGS at www.pcgs.com