Coin Review: 1890 Victorian Silver Crown

Back to UK Coins for todays post... this time a Victorian Silver Crown featuring the famous reverse of George & The Dragon design by Benedetto Pistrucci and the Jubilee Head obverse.

These coins are more or less the same size as a Morgan Dollar, much like other 'crown sized' coins all around the world at the time. The Crown was worth 5 Shillings, or 1/4 of £1 - in predecimal British coinage there were 240 pennies to the pound. Very confusing for anyone not from the UK and also for anyone born after about 1980!

Crowns, whilst not having large mintages are easy to find on auction sites in lower grades and a decent low grade example usually costs between £15-20 ($21-$25). For example 1890 has less than a million, and a lot of years have around 250k-300k minted.

The example in the picture is a mid range grade, nearly extremely fine (in UK grading, probably AU on the Sheldon scale) and cost me around £60.

British Crowns can be easy to overbid for if you don't know what to look for in terms of grading them so a few helpful pointers should you ever be interested in them:
*Look for wear on the helmet just above the eyeline, on lower grade examples this dissapears completely into the outline of the head.
*The leather strap accross the body and the reigns of the horse when it crosses the body
*The fingers on both hands should be distinct and the sword should also stand apart from the horses body.
*On the obverse look out for wear on the brooches, and the hair near Victorias ear.

Coin specifications:
.925 Silver, 28.28, 38.61mm
Obverse: Jubilee Bust, VICTORIA D:G: BRITT: REG: F:D:
Reverse: St George & Dragon, 1890