George II 1729 Five-Guineas, EIC, AU58, East India Company gold

George II (1727-60),gold Five Guineas, 1729 E.I.C. initials of the East India Company below young laureate head left, GEORGIVS.II. DEI.GRATIA,rev.crowned quartered shield of arms, date either side of crown, M.B.FE. ET. H. REX. F.D. B.ET. L. D. S. R. I. A. T ET. E. edge inscribed in raised letter and dated, +DECVS. ET. TVTAMEN ANNO. REGNI. TERTIO, inverted N's in ANNO, (Schneider 556; Schneider dies 2/2; King 161-2; Holloway 82; Bull EGC 553; MCE 279; Traveller 2083 this coin; S.3664).Toned with a matt sheen and some underlying brilliance, surface marks and hairlines, has been slabbed and graded by NGC as AU58 with special provenance label with a great story.

NGC Certification 2169818-011.

King Survey = 189 examples in commerce over the period 1960-2005.

The Latin legends translate as on obverse "George II by the Grace of God" and continues on to the reverse as "King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, Duke of Brunswick and Luneberg, High Treasurer and Elector of the Holy Roman Empire".

We note the official mint record of gold output for 1729 totals zero production, but the following year of 1730 likely contains the 1729 dated coins at a total of £91,628 worth of Five Guineas and Half Guineas including the East India Company issue dated 1729 and Guineas and Half-Guineas dated 1730.

The East India Company provided quantities of gold bullion from their trading activities to the Royal Mint to strike coinage with their provenance mark "E.I.C." at various times in the reign of King George II, probably as they were also responsible for taking great quantities of silver out of the country for export. The edges of these spectacular gold coins also carry an inscriptions as an "ornament and a safeguard" against the old practice of clipping with a further statement that this coin was issued in the third year of the King's reign. However the Mint's official output figures show no gold produced in the calendar year of 1729 and Woodhead notes in the output tables in Schneider that the EIC gold coinage was not included the official figures until 1731 when the gold output was £305,768 which is on the smaller side of gold outputs for the reign. Nevertheless, the "Samuel King" Survey co-authored by this cataloguer published in May 2005 showed that 189 examples of these coins were traded in a 45 year period on the British coin market 1960-2005, the most prolific of this reign. Perhaps this is because more of the EIC type Five Guineas were saved from circulation especially if the company originally gave such coins out to backers and favoured persons as gifts to cherish rather than use and spend. There is a record of Queen Caroline for instance receiving East India Company gold. The new East India Company headquarters opened in Leadenhall Street London in this year. 1729 is the only year a Five Guinea is marked E.I.C. which is the first year of EIC gold, and there was also a Guinea and Half-Guinea so marked this year. The E.I.C. marked coinage continues for only a ten-year period of dating and only for five dates in the period, 1729, 1730, 1731, 1732 and finally 1739. For 1730 there seems only to be an issue of Half-Guineas, the other later years are Guinea and Half-Guinea only. All are rare to extremely rare to find today.

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 Royal Gold and Currency Exchange, Australia, 24th October 1935.

Ex The Traveller Collection.