The 2017 Gold Sovereign coin from The Royal Mint features Benedetto Pistrucci’s original St George and the dragon design with the addition of a unique privy mark on the reverse to acknowledge its 200th anniversary. The Sovereign is The Royal Mint’s 22 carat gold flagship coin and has been a constant of British coinage, admired and trusted through times of change.

The Gold Sovereign offers a sense of luxury, history and symbolism that no other bullion coin can match. With its bold St George and the Dragon design, it has become an internationally recognized symbol of unrivaled accuracy, integrity and strength. Each Gold Sovereign is struck to the same precise standard as every Sovereign since 1817.

A circulating coin, it was struck in 916.7 fine gold to withstand daily use and it is struck from that same durable, 22 karat gold today. Adorned by the renowned engraver Benedetto Pistrucci’s iconic Saint George and the dragon design, which has endured for 200 years.

One of the oldest coins still produced today, The British Sovereign was first struck over 500 years ago in 1489, named to honor the king and has been a symbol of strength and prestige ever since. During the nineteenth century, the gold Sovereign was a recognized currency in more than 20 countries.

The tale of Saint George and the Dragon was brought back to Western Europe by returning crusaders. It would serve as inspiration when Pistrucci was commissioned by The Royal Mint to work on new designs as a reform of the coinage was undertaken in 1816, the government intervening to re-stabilize the currency after the Napoleonic Wars.

Pistrucci’s interest in St George had been aroused by Lady Spencer, to whom he had been introduced by Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society and friend of William Wellesley Pole, then Master of the Mint. Her Ladyship showed Pistrucci a wax model of Saint George and asked him to make another ‘in the Greek style’. Lady Spencer had no time for a figure dressed in gothic armour, an appealing sentiment to the Italian, whose favorite maxim was said to be ‘study Greek originals day and night’. Pistrucci’s iconic design first appeared on The Sovereign in 1817, instantly distinctive it became a classic and still endures 200 years later.

The Sovereign has always been produced by The Royal Mint, an institution with more than 1,000 years of heritage and experience, and we continue to preserve the quality and accuracy of the coin to this day.

Quantities of 25 come in unopened mint tubes. Smaller quantities are pulled out of a mint tube with white cotton gloves and placed into a protective coin flip.