Scotland 1555 ryal Fr-33

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Stack's Bowers 2021 ANA sale, lot 41508
photo courtesy Stack's Bowers LLC

This specimen was lot 41508 in Stack's Bowers ANA sale (Costa Mesa, CA, August 2021), where it sold for $31,200. The catalog description[1] noted,

"Rare 1555 3 Pound "Portrait" Piece, SCOTLAND. 3 Pound Piece (Portrait Ryal), 1555. Edinburgh Mint. Mary. NGC F-15. First Period, Before Marriage. Pale yellow-gold at the centers with richer violet and crimson iridescence at the borders. The obverse is well centered with broad doubling to most of the legends and shallow irregularities at 6 and 9 o'clock. Traces of old residue are visible in the right field and throughout REGINA. The crown is tight to the edge on the reverse but the legends remain intact. An old scratch to the right of the shield has long worn into the complexion. Overall pleasing sharpness for this RARE type.

The t[h]ree pound piece, and its fractions, displays one of the earliest numismatic portraits of Mary and the only individual portrait ever rendered in gold. While designated as "nobles" in the official records, "three pound piece" soon became the shorthand for this regal issue. Burns reports early references to them as "the pund piece with the quenis face" in 1591 and as the "Scotis thrie pund peces" in 1596. Also called a portrait ryal by modern collectors, this issue remains incredibly elusive with only about a half-dozen offered publicly in the past two decades. From the Loch Ness Collection."

This coin had a face value of sixty shillings but any gold coin would have had enormous buying power in sixteenth century Scotland.

Recorded mintage: unknown.

Specification: gold.

Catalog reference: S-5397; Fr-33; Burns-1 (fig. 819).

Source:

  • Friedberg, Arthur L. and Ira S. Friedberg, Gold Coins of the World, From Ancient Times to the Present, 9th ed., Clifton, NJ: Coin and Currency Institute, 2017.
  • Skingley, Philip, ed., Standard Catalogue of British Coins: Coins of Scotland, Ireland and the Islands (Jersey, Guernsey, Man & Lundy), Pre-Decimal Issues, 2nd edition, London: Spink & Son, 2003.
  • Lobel, Richard, Mark Davidson, Allan Hailstone and Eleni Calligas, Coincraft's Standard Catalogue of the Coins of Scotland, Ireland, Channel Islands & Isle of Man, London: Coincraft, 1999.
  • [1]Orsini, Matt, Kyle Ponterio and Jeremy Bostwick, The August 2021 ANA sale: World and Ancient Coins, Costa Mesa, CA: Stack's Bowers LLC, 2021.

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