British Gold Sovereign

History of the British Gold Sovereign Coin

The Gold Sovereign is manufactured at Britain’s Royal Mint. The Royal Mint is in Llantrisant, South Wales, and the facility was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1968.

The Royal Mint manufactures coins and medals for approximately 60 countries each year and is the world’s leading export mint.

The Royal Mint was originally established in 1279 and resided in the Tower of London. The Mint moved to larger facilities on nearby Tower Hill in London in 1811, before its second move to Wales in 1968.

During the 1800s and early 1900s, The Royal Mint began to open branch mints in various locations within the British Empire where major gold fields were discovered. These branch mints all manufactured gold sovereigns at various times.

Remarkably, the modern Sovereign has a nearly 200-year history but it’s still produced each year by The Royal Mint in Wales in both bullion and proof form.

The size and weight of all sovereigns are standard, but there is a large variety of coin designs on the market. This is because of the coin’s long history – the coin design has changed with each monarch, sometimes more than once.

A gold coin called a sovereign was first produced in England in 1489 under King Henry VII, bearing the King’s effigy, hence the name Sovereigns. Gold British Sovereign production continued under subsequent monarchs until 1604.

A widely used term ‘Modern Gold Sovereign’ covers Sovereigns produced since 1817. These coins were launched as part of the Great Recoinage of 1816.

For ease of identification, sovereigns are commonly referred to by the name of the monarch that they depict. The first modern sovereign in 1817, introduced in the reign of King George III, featured the effigy of the King on the obverse and Benedetto Pisttucci’s design of St George and the Dragon on the reverse. Pistrucci’s design was so well liked that it has been retained on many subsequent sovereign designs over the years, including very recent designs.

The sequence of monarchs featured on the Gold Sovereign coin from 1817 to 1901 is as follows: 1817 – 1820 George III, 1821 – 1830 George IV, 1831 – 1837 William IV, and 1838 – 1901 Victoria.

Given that Victoria reigned for so long, there were a number of design changes to the Victoria portrait on sovereigns over that period. Sovereigns in the period 1838 to 1887 depict her first portrait and are referred to as Victoria young head coins. From 1887 to 1893, a second portrait was introduced and the coins are known as Victoria Jubilee head, celebrating the Golden Jubilee. Sovereigns from 1893 to 1901 have a third portrait and are known as Victoria old head.

After Victoria, the sequence of Sovereigns is 1902 – 1910 Edward VII, 1911 – 1932 George V. Then Sovereign production essentially stopped until 1957 when the first Elizabeth II Sovereigns were minted.

As the British Empire expanded under Queen Victoria during the 1800s, the Gold Sovereign became the world’s most widely distributed gold coin. Although originally minted in London, the Sovereign came to be minted all over the world as Australia and South Africa became large gold producers. Mints in Pretoria, Bombay, Ottawa, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney turned out hundreds of millions of Sovereigns during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The design of Saint George slaying the dragon is common to the reverse of all variations of the coin.

Should Investors in Ireland Buy British Gold Sovereigns?

Buying Gold Sovereigns is a low cost way of diversifying an investment portfolio or bullion holding with the vital insurance of physical gold ownership.

Sovereigns contain exactly 0.2354 troy ounces of gold (nearly ¼ of an ounce) and so is easy for Irish investors to value using the international real-time spot gold price. 

Gold Sovereigns are liquid with most major dealers including GoldCore making a market in them. They are portable and easy to store due to their smaller size, and the quarter ounce divisibility allows sellers to sell a portion of their Gold Sovereign holdings.This is not the case when one owns a very large bar.

Whether you decide to take possession of your precious metals or have them stored safely on your behalf with a secure third party,  Gold Sovereigns are an excellent bullion coin to own. 

Gold Sovereigns typically command premiums of between 5% and 7% with GoldCore who offer the most competitive premiums for both delivery in Ireland and for secure international storage.

One very important factor when considering which coin to invest in is the addressable market for any future potential sale. In the case of the British Sovereign our neighbours, the British, have very important tax incentives to own sovereigns - they are CGT free. This means that should an investor from Ireland decide to sell, you will have a very substantial market of UK and international investors to sell your coins to at a fair price.