1891 Short Tail Melbourne Sovereign
Rare or Common?
In 1891, the Royal Mint modified the St George design on the reverse of the sovereign, and the modified design featured a horse with a longer tail. However, a small quantity of sovereigns struck for that year were issued with the old 'short tail' design, and are now considered extremely rare, or at least those of the London mint ones, and have been for several years. Melbourne 'short tail' sovereigns were not known to exist until a couple of years ago, and went unrecorded for many years. Now they are now apparently considered to be fairly common by Spink, and are actually listed at a lower catalogue price than their much more common, 'long-tailed' counterparts!
Value
London mint 'short tail' sovereigns are recorded as 'extremely rare' and do not have a catalogue price in Spink, although we recently sold an almost uncirculated example (possibly the finest in existence) for �5,000. By contrast, the 'short tail' Melbourne, which went unrecorded for many years, is not regarded as particularly rare by Spink, and in VF condition is priced at bullion value in the latest (2012) edition.
Rarity
Since the 1891 London Mint short tail variety first came to our attention back in 2005, we have discovered about 10 amongst the many thousands of sovereigns we have handled since then. However, over the same period of time, we have only found 2 1891 Melbourne 'short tail' specimens, one of which we discovered in 2007, the second of which we discovered on the 8th of February 2012. Although the London Mint variety has been listed as 'extremely rare', Spink does not consider the Melbourne variety to be rare at all. Why is this? We think that Spink is mistaken. We are probably Britain's (probably the world's) largest specialist gold sovereign dealer, and in our experience, the short tail Melbourne is much rarer than its London counterpart. If this episode tells us anything, it is that catalogues should not be considered the last word in coin price and rarity. We firmly believe that the 1891 Melbourne 'short tail' has been vastly under-rated by Spink, and deserves to be priced considerably higher than its also rare London counterpart.
Victoria Jubilee Head
Sovereigns were issued for Queen Victoria in almost every year from 1838 to 1901. There were three main obverse (head) designs, and two reverse designs. The jubilee head was produced from 1887 to 1893 inclusive.
1891 Melbourne Sovereign Mintage
Designs & Description
All Victoria Jubilee Head sovereigns from 1887 to 1893 share the same obverse (head) design. The reverse is the familiar St. George & Dragon design originally engraved by Benedetto Pistrucci about 1817.
Mints
In 1891, The Royal Mint in London, and the Australian mints in Melbourne and Sydney, all issued sovereigns. You can visit our Mints & Mintmarks page for further information.
Availability
As with many older sovereigns, availability can be quite variable, particularly in better condition. Often we come across small batches of sovereigns, all of a particular date and mintmark, so that we have an abundant supply while stocks last, then we may not see another similar batch for years.
The US $ prices in the this table may be out of date due to currency fluctuations.
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Date | Mint | Grade | Stock | Price £ | Price $
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1891 | Melbourne | gFine | Yes | £795* | $1,270
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1891 | Melbourne | aFine | Sold | £595* | $950
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*Correct as of May 2013
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