06-04-2022, 08:26 PM
(04-04-2022, 11:33 AM)Dean Wrote: who'd be generally regarded as the top grader in NZ (excluding ones self from the reckoning!)?
(06-04-2022, 05:39 PM)Dean Wrote: According to Bertrand definition, an uncirculated coin is one in mint condition, put aside at the time of issue. With this definition in mind I am puzzling over the question: why would there be fewer uncirculated 1936 florins, compared to 1933, 1934, 1935 or 1937? If some people back then were inclined to put aside an uncirculated florin, why would the propensity to do so be so much less for 1936? Could it be that a "genuinely" uncirculated 1936 florin is not significantly more rare than a "genuinely" uncirculated florin from any of those other years, but because so many lightly circulated coins are now also called uncirculated (and actually swamping the genuinely uncirculated in terms of numbers) the rarity of an uncirculated coin is determined by the number of lightly circulated that are called uncirculated, of which there are more in years 1933, 1933, 1935, 1937 compared to 1936?
It's a pretty good theory. Such a strict definition would be hard to prove unless an item were wrapped in tissue or cotton on the day of issue and locked in a vault with some kind of affidavit certifying the date of deposit. Otherwise distinguishing the two options as per your post would be difficult, possibly impossible.
Bill Lampard used to say - in line with that definition - that UNC wasn't a condition but a state, i.e. never circulated. But then if you took your "never circulated" coin and left it in a jar to rattle around with other coins, it would still technically be in a state of never having circulated, while potentially exhibiting severe wear. That's probably where the compromise definition comes in.
I was once offered a sovereign that had supposedly - we need to assume honesty for the sake of argument - been put aside fresh from the bank and kept in a purse for something like 70 years; unfortunately it had rubbed against a lot of change during that time and was far from pristine. Assuming the story to be correct, it had never been used in trade and was thus in a state of being uncirculated, but based on the amount of wear it exhibited I'd have struggled to call lit VF.
If you look at older British coin books they avoided "uncirculated" entirely, which was considered a new, "American" concept. EF was as high as you got with any issued coins, with FDC reserved for proofs and, presumably, those few items that had been put aside as above. The definition I read somewhere in the 1970s of "Extremely Fine" as denoting an "extremely fine" amount of wear and no more, tallies with that approach. Back to Bill Lampard - his take was that once a coin was issued, it could be no better than EF accordingly. I'd like to see a return to that, but it isn't going to happen.