Great Britain: Victoria Crown 1845,...

Description

A Simply Beautiful Young Head Crown!

Victoria Crown 1845, S3882, Young Head, MS64 PCGS, a truly beautiful and extraordinarily choice coin, the type struck for just three years then abandoned by the Royal Mint, and one of the rarest of all English milled crowns in the highest grades, among which this piece easily places: stylish in many ways, it is sharp if not fully bold in strike with a wonderfully detailed portrait, all the tiny portions of the bust filled during the minting process with flowing silver and this produced intimate details such as the scrollwork on the hair fillet running across the queen's head to her forehead, her ear and eyelid, and the falling tendril of her ponytail; only the tiny date is softly impressed on this side.

On the reverse, the shield is sharply detailed except for two of the tiny lions' faces, and the crown just lacks detail on the little jewels on the left side; the luster cartwheels and is satiny; the wonderful toning forms a halo around the queen's face, a wide swath of bluish mauve around a silvery rose-gold center; while the reverse is an artist's palette of rich lilac-blue and pinkish gold iridescence. A very subtle diebreak cascades through the obverse legend. All in all, this is one of the finest Young Head crowns seen, and in the opinion of the cataloguer (who also described the other coin) as fine technically as the prooflike certified MS65 PCGS coin we sold in January; the two coins just had different types of luster and surface textures. Perhaps 95% or more of all Young Head crowns fall short of this beautiful specimen.
From the Guilford Courthouse Collection.

Metal: Silver
Diameter: 38.61mm
Weight: 28.276g
ASW: 0.8409oz
Mintage: 159,000

More information about Great Britain Coins. See also: Great Britain World Coin Nationality.

View Certification Details from PCGS