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Throughout her incredible seventy-year reign, Queen Elizabeth II appeared on a multitude of different coins, from pre-decimal to now. The very first coinage portrait of Queen Elizabeth II was created by Mary Gillick in 1953, and was used on coins in the United Kingdom and other countries until 1970.
Here, we will be looking back at the British coins of Queen Elizabeth II through the years.
There’s one coin in particular though that holds more meaning and beauty than any other, blending fact and fiction to produce what can only be described by many as the world’s most beautiful coin. Una and the Lion.
Decimalisation, or Decimal Day as it is most known, occurred in 1971 after the pre-decimal system was deemed too complicated with pounds, shillings and pence. Initially, the plan was to make the new decimal currency into cents and dollars (known more in the USA), but this was reconsidered, and pounds and pence were the chosen coinage.
In Britain, the original grading scale classed every coin as either ‘Fine’ or ‘Extremely Fine’ – these were the only options. As times changed, extra steps were added into that scheme: ‘Good’ and ‘Very Good’, both below Fine, and ‘Very Fine’, below Extremely Fine. That created five grading steps, which was even further expanded over time by dealers by adding ‘Almost’ or ‘Good’ to any of those grades, with ‘Almost Fine’ being less than Fine and ‘Good Fine’ being better than Fine, but less than ‘Almost Very Fine’.
For over one hundred years this was the grading scheme in Europe, and it didn’t include the grade ‘Uncirculated’, for the simple reason that it was considered that any coin that came from circulation couldn’t be ‘uncirculated’.
There were 12 pennies to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound. There were also Half Crowns, Three Pennies, Sixpences and Farthings. Prior to the decimalisation era, many had problems dealing with the complicated system, with Sir John Bowring, a Member of Parliament at the time, being one of the first calling to change to a currency based on units of ten.
As we explored in our ‘Cash in the attic’ blog, some people are living within a treasure trove of potential coin discoveries. Unfortunately, the vast majority of us aren’t living in a building lined with heritage sovereigns and paved in swathes of gold (coins).
Many of our clients instead satisfy their discovery quota through exclusive customer-only offers of world first launches, such as the first sovereign to contain authentic gold from King George III’s epoch-making era, 200 years ago…
