Commonwealth 1654 Unite, 4 over 3, G over reversed D, MS63, ex Broughton and Rosen

Commonwealth (1649-60), gold Unite of Twenty Shillings, 1654, date with 4 struck over 3, English shield within laurel and palm branch, legends in English language, initial mark sun, .THE. COMMONWEALTH. OF. ENGLAND., the letter G struck over a retrograde D, rev. English and Irish shields, value .XX. above, beaded circle and legend surrounding, date at top, legend surrounding, .GOD. WITH. VS., weight 9.01g (cf.Schneider 342; N.2715; S.3208). Lightly toned, has been graded and slabbed by NGC as MS63, the finest graded of the date, very rare indeed.

NGC Certification 5880656-024.

We note this 1654 dated unite is currently the top of the population for this rare date across both services. The coin also ties with the finest graded Commonwealth Unites at PCGS which has examples of the much more common dates of 1651 and 1653 in the same high grade.

All gold coins of this period are struck in 22 carat gold and are the first British coins to have legends in plain English. In our experience for every 25 gold Unites of the Commonwealth you see for sale, only 2 will be of the date 1654. To find the variety with the overdate and the retrograde D in legend is perhaps an even greater ratio of rarity.

Provenance:

Ex St James Auction 7, 8^th February 2008, lot 170.

Ex Dr Paul Broughton Collection, Spink Coin Auction 235, 22^nd March 2016, lot 470.

Ex CNG Review, Summer 2016, item 431570.

Ex Jonathan P Rosen Collection, CNG, Triton XXI, 9^th January 2018, lot 1465.