William III 1698 Guinea Elephant and Castle AU53, second finest graded

William III (1694-1702), gold Guinea, 1698, Elephant and Castle, mintmark below first laureate bust right, Latin legend and toothed border surrounding, GVLIELMVS. III. DEI. GRA., rev. crowned cruciform emblematic shields, large lions in English shield emblematic sceptres in angles, Lion of Nassau at centre, date either side of top crown, Latin legend and toothed border surrounding, .MAG. BR. FRA. ET.HIB. REX. (Schneider 500; EGC 413 R2; Farey 417 ER; MCE 181; Traveller 2043 this coin; S.3461). Toned, a little weakly struck at centre, with just a little circulation wear both sides, some hairlines and surface marks, has been slabbed and graded by NGC as AU53 with special provenance label, very well preserved for this extremely rare issue.

NGC Certification 2169831-017 - as of June 2025 this coin is currently the second finest graded at NGC out of 7 pieces, none have been graded by PCGS at all.

The Latin legends translate as on the obverse "William the Third by the Grace of God," and abbreviated on the reverse as "King of Great Britain, France and Ireland."

The elephant and castle provenance mark is indicative of being issued by the "Royal African Company of England" as it had been so reconstructed by the Duke of York from 1672. The "R.A.C." was quite a success trading with Africa and the New World through the 1670s and 1680s, but from 1692 onwards things became more problematic. The Nine Years War with France did not help, as well as competition from other traders over the African monopoly the company seemed to hold along with the East India Company for the Far East. In 1697 a compromise agreement was reached allowing others to trade in Africa as long as they paid a 10% tariff to the R.A.C. This meant that less gold was actually being brought back to the UK to coin and the issues were subsequently small.

Provenance Story:

This coin has a most intriguing provenance being hidden away in a European family collection since before World War II. The "Traveller" was a wealthy gentleman who having inherited a portion of a successful family company, made a fortune by promptly selling it and then travelled the world on what was in part an extended honeymoon for the decade between the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the outbreak of World War II. With the financial instability of the great depression and after dabbling at first with gold bullion, he decided to form an enormous collection of world gold coins from ancient to modern whilst travelling the world to see the relevant dealers in their geographical locations to find the most appropriate coins. The result was a collection of some 15,000 coins, 1,700 of which we are told are British, with all going into secure hiding as of 1940 when the nazi regime encroached on where our traveller was located. Sadly, the collector died of a stroke with the stress of the world situation at this time and the collection remained hidden away for decades, stored carefully in individual envelopes in cigar boxes within locked aluminium strongboxes, that were buried in the ground in a field at the collector's property. His wife carried the secret of the burial location for the decades following and reaching the end of her life some 50 years later divulged the secret to her only daughter, whereupon in the 1990s the family retrieved all the coins intact and secured them safely in a bank vault until it was time to sell by auction in 2025. Though we often hear of buried treasure or hoards of coins from antiquity in the ground, it is not often we hear of a sophisticated coin collection actually being buried for decades, an intriguing story to permanently associate with coins of the Traveller provenance which has been written about in newspapers and online worldwide. We are lucky enough to have secured a small number of rare British coins from this esteemed collection.

Provenance:

Ex The Traveller Collection.