Neat article about The Sovereign

Weiss

From yesterday's UK-based Express:

The Sovereign

Exbrit

Good article, thanks for sharing it. I also like the story of sovereigns being donated to the U.S. that started the Smithsonian.

ProofArtworkonCircs

I don't think Canada had a mint in the 1850's. How about 1907?

WillieBoyd2

I first heard of and saw British Sovereigns when I saw the James Bond film
"From Russia with Love" in 1963.

From Russia with Love

Exbrit

Where can I get one of those briefcases?

Hussulo

Interesting artcle and well written. It seems the gold prices continue to fall:

Gold price

maybe everyone's investing in Bitcoins?

LochNESS

<< <i>I first heard of and saw British Sovereigns when I saw the James Bond film
"From Russia with Love" in 1963. … >>


Me too!

Yorkshireman

My mother was English so I knew about them. They are such cool coins. What a neat piece of history.
I am kicking myself for not having bought a stash of them ten years ago.

trozau

First time I became aware of the St George slaying the dragon sovereign was when I saw and bought in 1990 a BU 1984 UK 5 Sovereign coin in a blister pack. Couldn't resist the large coin and now have quite a few of them. Pistrucci's masterpiece at its finest.

LochNESS

My first taste of the design was the 1935 "art deco" crown. The incuse edge lettering doesn't hurt, either. Still my favorite coin. I bought one where the edge lettering is upside-down. Someday I hope to get the rarest variety. We'll see how that goes. If memory serves, it's "unique."

Crackout

I love The Sovereign! I'm trying to add to my type collection when funds allow.

trozau

^ Sweet! ^

Here's a couple of my 2000 UK 5 Sovereigns (5 Pound)

SYRACUSIAN

It's almost amusing to read how many of you hadn't heard of the sovereign until relatively recently. In countries where people did not trust the official currency, due to inflation, the sovereign was the de facto coin that was not only used for savings, but also for some serious transactions, such as purchasing land or property. Even smaller scale renovations, or purchases were calculated and paid for in sovereigns until the late 50s, maybe even early 60s. The plague of the fakes from Italy or Lebanon was solved by using sovereigns that had a signature on them by a specialist, something that a grading company would call today "graffiti".

When Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power in Egypt by overthrowing
<---------King Farouk, the vast and wealthy Greek community saw its factories and houses seized, and their only option was to leave the country along with a minimum of objects, and again, the sovereigns were the only wealth that they could realistically carry with them, on the way back home.

To this day, the Bank of Greece does not publish the spot price of gold per ounce, but instead the buy/sell price of a sovereign with a big premium. Evidently, there are several unauthorized sellers who buy/sell with a minimum premium of a couple euros more or less. And to prove how easily old wounds come back to surface, it was only a couple of years ago, that tens of thousands of Greek citizens were buying again vast amounts of sovereigns, with some days the line outside the Bank of Greece being similar to the lines formed in the Steve Jobs days outside Apple stores.

Crackout, you will probably be interested to add some one year type designs to your set, issued during the past 14 years: 1989 (very much in demand and expensive), 2002 (shield reverse),2005, 2012 and maybe a couple more that I might be forgetting now. That's without counting the 4 or 5 different obverse designs that were minted during Elizabeth II 's long reign. Note that only the 1989 full sovereign is very expensive, unlike the same design gold £2 and £5, just as with the 1937 proof only issue: the reason is the huge number of full sovereign collectors (type,date,die numbers and so on), who are indifferent to other denominations, followed by a lot of half sovereign collectors, who will often compete for earlier high grade and/or proof Victorian issues by paying slightly less than similar grade full sovereigns.

Steve27

I always liked the Sovereign, and I'm glad I bought this one when gold was still affordable.




Does anyone know if this was the only coin which could be used in any country over which Britain held sovereignty? And is that why it's called a Sovereign?

trozau

<< <i>It's almost amusing to read how many of you hadn't heard of the sovereign until relatively recently. In countries where people did not trust the official currency, due to inflation, the sovereign was the de facto coin that was not only used for savings, but also for some serious transactions, such as purchasing land or property. Even smaller scale renovations, or purchases were calculated and paid for in sovereigns until the late 50s, maybe even early 60s. The plague of the fakes from Italy or Lebanon was solved by using sovereigns that had a signature on them by a specialist, something that a grading company would call today "graffiti".

When Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power in Egypt by overthrowing
<---------King Farouk, the vast and wealthy Greek community saw its factories and houses seized, and their only option was to leave the country along with a minimum of objects, and again, the sovereigns were the only wealth that they could realistically carry with them, on the way back home.

To this day, the Bank of Greece does not publish the spot price of gold per ounce, but instead the buy/sell price of a sovereign with a big premium. Evidently, there are several unauthorized sellers who buy/sell with a minimum premium of a couple euros more or less. And to prove how easily old wounds come back to surface, it was only a couple of years ago, that tens of thousands of Greek citizens were buying again vast amounts of sovereigns, with some days the line outside the Bank of Greece being similar to the lines formed in the Steve Jobs days outside Apple stores.

Crackout, you will probably be interested to add some one year type designs to your set, issued during the past 14 years: 1989 (very much in demand and expensive), 2002 (shield reverse),2005, 2012 and maybe a couple more that I might be forgetting now. That's without counting the 4 or 5 different obverse designs that were minted during Elizabeth II 's long reign. Note that only the 1989 full sovereign is very expensive, unlike the same design gold £2 and £5, just as with the 1937 proof only issue: the reason is the huge number of full sovereign collectors (type,date,die numbers and so on), who are indifferent to other denominations, followed by a lot of half sovereign collectors, who will often compete for earlier high grade and/or proof Victorian issues by paying slightly less than similar grade full sovereigns. >>



Dimitri, thanks for the info!

SYRACUSIAN

Thank you T.

Steve, I cannot answer your questions, but if you read even part of my post, you'd have noticed that sovereigns were officially used and accepted in countries that had no ties with Great Britain at all, such as Greece. There are numerous contracts from the 50s and 60s (and practically all of the pre WW2 ones) where the sovereign is the official currency, despite the parallel existence of the new drachma since 1953, pegged to the US dollar with a ratio that remained unchanged for the following 20 years (initially 1:15, that was changed overnight by the Minister of Finances to 1:30 in order to stop funds from leaving the country).

Edited to add: I don't know if it was the only one accepted in Commonwealth countries. In Cyprus, the UK soldiers were paid in silver Indian rupees until the first coins equivalent to 3d,6d,shilling and florin were minted (only copper coins were minted from 1879 to 1901). Shiroh had compiled a very interesting table of such equivalent denominations to the British ones, and I was surprised to note that there were very slight differences in practically all of them.

When I mentioned that there are plenty of unauthorized sellers who buy/sell sovereigns at a rate very close to spot price, it goes without saying that there are several unscrupulous crooks among them. Even at this time of incredible austerity, a pensioner from Northern Greece, went and found such a person and risked his life savings, thinking that he bought 200 thousand euros worth of gold sovereigns at a slight profit compared to the Bank of Greece's rates: it turned out that they were all fakes, a case that I'm hoping to catch tonight on TV, in the real (Greek) CSI show.