The chief duty of The Royal Mint throughout its long history has been to supply the people of Britain with the coins they use every day.

However, since early on in its history The Royal Mint has used its skills to provide coins for circulation overseas. The first recorded instance came as long ago as 1325 when, during the reign of Edward II, coins were shipped to Bordeaux for use in the king’s territories in south-west France.

The Royal Mint’s export work has blossomed from these distant beginnings and has enabled it to develop into the world’s leading export mint.

A coin fit for a king

In October 1489 Henry VII gave personal authority for the production of a new coin, to be made of gold. This coin was considerably larger than anything previously issued in England and Henry himself declared that it was to be called a ‘Sovereign’, deliberately suggesting a close association with himself as the king.

Henry VII Sovereign

The gold Sovereign is perhaps the greatest example of the international role played by British coins. Famous for its quality and accuracy, in the nineteenth century it was considered ‘the chief coin of the world’ used not just at home and in the territories of the British Empire but also accepted in countries with no connection to Britain, as familiar in Brazil as on the streets of London.

1842 "Shield reverse" Sovereign

The gold Sovereign we know today was introduced in 1817. Its St George and the dragon design was created by Benedetto Pistrucci, an Italian gem engraver who had been encouraged to come to Britiain and work at the Royal Mint. The design, and its theme of good over evil, has become so firmly established that it is now considered virtually inseperable from the gold Sovereign and has ensured the survival of Pistrucci’s name and reputation.

1817 George III Sovereign

Branch mints

In the 1850s, a significant amount of gold had been discovered in Australia and a gold rush gripped the country. In 1855 The Royal Mint established its first overseas branch in Sydney to convert the local gold into Sovereigns and Half-Sovereigns, rather than having to ship it back to Britain by a long and often treacherous sea voyage.

Branch mints and their mintmarks

To begin with production of Sovereigns abroad was closely monitored but by 1871 Sydney was allowed to strike Sovereigns bearing the same design as those struck at Tower Hill.

Branch mints were then set up in:

• Melbourne (1872)
• Perth (1899)
• Ottowa (1908)
• Bombay (1918)
• Pretoria (1923)

All of them striking Sovereigns distinguishable from one another only by their individual mintmarks. From 1887 all of them carried the increasingly iconic St George and the dragon.

What was already a global coin was now being produced on a global basis. By the end of the nineteenth century, when out shopping in Piccadilly, you were just as likely to encounter a Sovereign made 10,000 miles away, as one made three miles away on Tower Hill.

Between them the branch mints produced nearly 500 million Sovereigns, almost as many as The Royal Mint itself. All the branches have now closed but today the Royal Canadian Mint, the Perth Mint and the South African Mint are direct descendants of these branch mints.

End of an era

In the United Kingdom, Sovereigns disappeared from general circulation during the First World War, but they remain an important part of British culture. Whether used by James Bond to buy his way out of sticky situations, set into rings and worn as jewellery, or as a coin treasured by collectors, today The Sovereign is the flagship coin of the Royal Mint.

Changing faces of the modern sovereign: 1817 and 2020

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