William and Mary 1690 Guinea, very rare date NGC AU58, 2nd finest graded

William and Mary (1688-94), gold Guinea, 1690, conjoined busts right, legend surrounding, GVLIELMVS. ET. MARIA. DEI. GRATIA, no stop at end of legend, toothed border around rim both sides, rev crowned quartered shield of arms, Lion of Nassau as an escutcheon at centre, Irish harp with 6 strings, date either side of crown, .MAG. BR. FR. ET. HIB. REX. ET. REGINA. (Schneider -; Farey 0320 VR; Bull EGC 365 R; MCE 150; Traveller 2033 this coin; S.3426). Lightly toned with some red hue and considerable brilliance, has been slabbed and graded by NGC as AU58 with special provenance label, a very rare date not present in the Schneider collection.

NGC Certification 2169797-003, as of June 2025 this coin is currently the second finest graded of this date at NGC out of ten examples; the four of this date graded by PCGS are all lower grades.

The Latin legends translate to on obverse "William and Mary by the Grace of God" continuing on the reverse as "King and Queen of Great Britain, France and Ireland."

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 A. H. Baldwin, purchased 26^th October 1937.

Ex The Traveller Collection.