Good purchase or a terrible one? British West Africa Trial Shilling
desslok
Posts: 310 ✭✭✭
I purchased this coin in the last Heritage sale for $600 including the juice, myself being the only bidder. I'd like to ask the opinions of more knowledgeable collectors in this field, because I researched a lot online and only got myself very confused with conflicting information and pricing that I found for similar pieces.
Here's my purchase: 
The auction description reads:
"George VI stainless steel Trial Strike Shilling 1952 MS66 NGC Royal mint, FT326, KM-TS3. Thick flan, horizontal TRIAL reverse. From the collector: "A trial piece struck in stainless steel on a thick flan weighing 5.068gm. The word "TRIAL" in relief vertically in front of face on obverse and horizontally above date figures 52 on the reverse." A wonderfully preserved example, with light gunmetal toning on both sides. Missing from both the Diana and Arielle Collections. To provide a somewhat comparable example, the Diana Collection possessed a King's Norton mint aluminum trial strike that was supposedly one of two known (Baldwin's 58, lot 1445); that piece hammered at £1,100, or over $2,000 at the time. Apparently extremely rare, in addition to being an objectively attractive strike."
The auction description does not mention that this same coin (same cert#) sold at the same venue (Heritage), just two years prior, for a considerable $1204.38 w/bp. The recent cataloger must have known about it, because the auction description is repeated verbatim from the earlier sale, here:
https://coins.ha.com/itm/british-west-africa/world-coins/british-west-africa-george-vi-stainless-steel-trial-strike-shilling-1952-ms66-ngc/a/3039-37109.s?ic4=GalleryView-ShortDescription-071515
Looking at just this result, one could imagine I got a good deal, $600 for a coin that sold for $1200 just two years prior in the same auction venue. But I also found online records of numerous similar-looking BWE trial pieces in different metallic compositions, selling in various different prices, some as low as $50. Heritage alone sold about 8 of these, with prices (excluding this coin) in the wide range of $100 - $750. Some sources say these coins were struck during the 1960s by the Royal Mint using old dies they had laying around. One of these sources says they were produced as sample vending machine tokens, which to me isn't very reassuring.
Here's the lowest result, at 40 GBP:
https://www.dnw.co.uk/auction-archive/special-collections/lot.php?specialcollection_id=160&lot_id=116871
And another at 90 GBP:
londoncoins.co.uk/?page=Pastresults&auc=153&searchlot=911&searchtype=2
It is interesting how the Heritage description makes a reference to Baldwin's auction 58 lot 1445, in which an Aluminum shilling without the "TRIAL" inscription sold for 1100 GBP, but does not mention the previous lot in the same sale, lot 1444, where a much similar looking piece with the "TRIAL" inscription sold for 160 GBP.
I guess one possible explanation is that the nickel version of the coins are all later restrikes and worth around $50-$150, while this steel type is a rarer and more valuable. Perhaps this is the case. The other possible explanations is that some collectors (myself included) don't know what they are doing and sometimes pay $1200 for $50 items. Or perhaps there is some middle ground here which I haven't quite found yet.
So, if anyone in the group knows something about these coins, please chime in. Don't spare my feelings, if you think I bought a $50 vending machine token for $600, please go ahead and say it. I won'd be offended. If on the other hand this piece is more special than some of the others and more valuable, I would be very happy to hear it and put my mind at ease. In any case I'm not looking to sell the coin, so this is purely for knowledge and educational purposes.
Comments
Beautiful Piece!
SEE:
THE COINAGE OF BRITISH WEST AFRICA AND ST.HELENA 1684-1958 by DAVID VICE
Published in London in 1983
RKL
numiscongo.com
For what it's worth, if collected this series I would have purchased the coin.