1858 half sovereign

[echidna]

This appears to be an unpublished variety .
Very odd that such a major error has gone under the radar.
NGC have attributed one of these so it cant be new.
Its just not in the catalogues.
The above image comes from the Nobles archive.
Sale 86 Lot 1380
Its got to be the finest known 1858 half sov and the fact that its the RFG error is intriguing.
Perhaps someone put it aside for this reason.

[enworb]

Id say that was a major F up at the sydney mint!

[robbiegal]

great!

perhaps the die typesetter ran out of letters and tried to substitute an F for an E ?

[coxsp]

nice work......I'm off to check my half sovs.

[Mister T]

Another nice find. I guess this is not a die fill?

Looking at http://en.numista.com/catalogue/photos/australie/g947.jpg is seems like the F is actually an F rather than an E.

[wwwww]

great!

perhaps the die typesetter ran out of letters and tried to substitute an F for an E ?

The dies were repunched to extend their useful life, if they put an F instead of an E, it means they didn't have a useful F to repunch the die with. This is the reason for the numerous overdates and such varieties as this.

The necessity of this was due to the fact that new dies were imported from the Royal Mint UK (a long and costly process), the Royal mint UK undersupplied half sovereign dies as they were intended for local usage while sovereigns usually ended up in the UK.

[robbiegal]

I was scouring my Status catalogue last night for this error
being new to it - I do confess that I was looking at the full sovvies -not the half's!! ha ha

[echidna]

I would like to acknowledge and thank Walter for adding this coin to his bluesheet.  My count is three examples known.

May the force be with you

[trout]

I am just getting started on the Aussie Gold and am pretty much a "Newbie" with these.
Thanks for the post and I will look out for this one :good: