The Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) recently announced its Collector’s Society 2017 NGC Registry Award Winners, and my collection of Young Head Victoria Sovereigns, “The Young Victoria Collection,”¹ was awarded Best in Category in the 2017 World Coin Competitive Sets competition for the Sovereign (Victoria) 1838-1901, Circulation Issue² category. The collection won the Best in Category award twice previously in 2012 and 2016.

The only improvement made to the collection since last year’s competition was the addition of a Choice Uncirculated 1854 sovereign, replacing an Almost Uncirculated example.

This increased the number of mint state (MS-61 or better) examples from nineteen to twenty, and twelve of those twenty are in Choice to Gem condition (MS 64 to MS 66).

Despite this improvement, the overall point score NGC awarded the collection actually decreased by 13,293 from last year! This initially had me scratching my head until I noticed that NGC has now designated four key dates/variants as “Non-competitive; for display only,” and examples of these key dates/variants no longer contribute points to a collection’s overall score. NGC gave no explanation for this change.³

The Young Victoria Collection in its entirety can be seen here.

Notes

1. The Young Victoria Collection at NGC Collectors Society: https://tinyurl.com/y6vwax8g
2. Category Sovereign (Victoria) 1838-1901, Circulation Issue: https://tinyurl.com/y7nezme5
3. The key dates/variants affected were: 1841 (124,050 minted), 1843 Narrow Shield (mintage unknown), 1859 Ansell (167,539 minted), and 1874 (520,713 minted). Examples of each of these key dates/variants known to exist today number only in the dozens. I can’t speculate why NGC excluded these four key dates/variants, but I note that my collection includes three of the four, while competing collections have none.