Gold British Trade Dollar 1897 - NGC PF61
One of less than 10 that are believed to exist.
Graded by NGC as PF61 - no other examples are graded higher.
This is only the second Gold Trade Dollar to come to the market in recent years. The last publicly traded piece was a 1902 example which made US $214,000 in 2014.
‘Trade Dollars’ were issued in silver from February 1895 as a way of standardising silver coinage in territories in the East.
The story of the ‘Trade Dollar’ can be traced back to the Chinese ‘Opium Wars’. Once China lost the war it was forced to concede various ports to Britain and other powers. Famously this included Hong Kong which remained a British colony until 1997.
Whilst Britain, and other European countries, had conducted a substantial amount of trade with China, their control of Hong Kong opened up a new period of flourishing international trade. Merchants and entrepreneurs flocked from around the world.
With money, and particularly large silver coins, flooding into Hong Kong this presented its own issues as there was no standardisation with these coins. A solution to this was issuing a silver coin specifically for trade in Hong Kong and wider China - the ‘Trade Dollar’ was born as a medium of exchange.
Silver Trade Dollars were issued from 1895 through to 1935 with Bombay, Calcutta and London mint marks (with London coins having no actual mint mark). On rare occasions gold versions were produced - this is one such example.
£140,000
Denomination/metal: Gold
Type: Gold
Condition: NGC PF61 (none graded higher)
Mint mark: Bombay
Obv. Britannia standing, ship sailing past to left, ‘ONE DOLLAR’. Mintmark is a small ‘B’ on the middle prong of the trident.
Rev. Chinese symbol for longevity as main design, with characters in Chinese and Jawi Malay denoting the denomination of this coin
39mm., 34.69gm.
Ref. Pr 2B; KM T5a
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