Easy enough, I thought. Pretty-much the first bullion coin, and a sneaky way of getting gold out of SA in the late-sixties. The first low-premium user-accessible gold in easy 1 oz chunks, it changed the course of stacking in a radical way (if you want to get philosophical). Design - Antelopey animal on one side, guy with big beard on t'other - Check. No obvious variations. Has specific tax treatments in various places - no VAT in the UK (but CGT). Is 22 carat so attracts GST here (although I'm not clear on whether that is partial). The things I didn't know include that there were proofs (the first year 1967 had 10,000 against a run of 50,000 - but check out 1978, the same number of proofs for over 6 *million* krugers. Gulp). Variations in the proof designs (frosting, reeding et cetera) as the mint refined it's approach. Another thing I didn't know was that The South African Gold Coin Exchange were slabbing proof Krugerrand years before the NGC using a Grading system with a maximum of 105. I'm somewhat surprised that the premiums are not higher for the proofs. You can pick up bullion Krugers at spot+2% in the UK for ten and over, and then there are slabbed proofs on eBay at a couple of thousand US, which is only 16% above spot. Is this an example of fashion at work, or a saturated market, or a general lack of numismatic knowledge on my part?
Krugs have never had any numismatic value attached to them like say the Sovereign has. I dare say this non numismatic value for the bullion Krugs has flowed over so that the proofs just have no love either !
