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The half sovereign is a British gold coin denominated at one-half of a pound sterling. First issued in its present form in 1817, it has been struck by the Royal Mint in most years since 1980 as a collector's and bullion piece .
It produced gold coins with an original design between 1855 and 1870, with "Sydney Mint, Australia, One Sovereign" on one side and Queen Victoria on the other, or "Sydney Mint, Australia, Half Sovereign", before starting in 1870 to mint gold coins of British design. One gold sovereign equalled £1.
The Royal Mint continues to produce sovereigns, as well as quarter sovereigns (introduced in 2009), half sovereigns, double sovereigns and quintuple sovereigns. Between 1987 and 2012 a series of bullion coins, the Britannia , was issued, containing 1 troy ounce (31.1 g), 1 ⁄ 2 ounce, 1 ⁄ 4 ounce and 1 ⁄ 10 ounce of fine gold at a ...
Since 1982 all of these have also been produced as sterling silver and 22 carat gold proofs. Although the design of the old round £1 coin changed every year, these are not considered to be commemoratives, as they do not mark an event or its anniversary.
The sovereign is a British gold coin with a nominal value of one pound sterling (£1) and contains 0.2354 troy ounces (113.0 gr; 7.32 g) of pure gold.Struck since 1817, it was originally a circulating coin that was accepted in Britain and elsewhere in the world; it is now a bullion coin and is sometimes mounted in jewellery.
The Royal Mint realised there was a market for sovereign coins, and began to sell them to collectors at well over face or bullion value. [41] Beginning in 1980, five-pound gold coins were sold every year, except 1983, sometimes in a four-piece proof set with the half sovereign, sovereign and double sovereign, and sometimes sold individually.
A year later Australian pennies and half-pennies entered circulation. Unlike in New Zealand, there was no half-crown. In 1931 gold sovereigns stopped being minted in Australia. A crown or five-shilling coin was minted in 1937 and 1938. Coinage of the Australian pound was replaced by decimalised coins of the Australian dollar on 14 February 1966 ...
Such problems were less acute with the sovereign, for which demand continued high as a world-wide trade coin, whereas the half sovereign tended to remain in Britain. In 1884, the Gladstone government proposed to reduce the amount of gold in the half sovereign by a tenth, rendering it a token coin, but the change was abandoned. [10]