Crown (British coin)
The British crown, the successor to the English crown and the Scottish dollar, came into being with the Union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland in 1707. As with the English coin, its value was five shillings.
Always a heavy silver coin weighing around one ounce, during the 19th and 20th centuries the crown declined from being a real means of exchange to being a coin rarely spent and minted for commemorative purposes only.
Crowns were minted a few times after decimalisation of the British currency in 1971, initially with a nominal value of 25 pence. However, commemorative crowns issued since 1990 have a face value of five pounds.
History
The coin's origins lay in the English silver crown, one of many silver coins that appeared in various countries from the 16th century onwards, the most famous example perhaps being the famous Spanish pieces of eight, all of which were of a similar size and weight and thus interchangeable in international trade. The kingdom of England also minted gold Crowns in the 16th and 17th centuries.The dies for all gold and silver coins of Queen Anne and King George I were engraved by John Croker, a migrant originally from Dresden in the Duchy of Saxony.
The British crown was always a large coin, and from the 19th century it did not circulate well. However, crowns were usually struck in a new monarch's coronation year, true of each monarch since King George IV up until the present monarch in 1953, with the single exception of King George V.
The Queen Victoria "Gothic" crown of 1847 is considered by many to be the most beautiful British coin ever minted.
The King George V "wreath" crowns struck from 1927 through 1936 depict a wreath on the reverse of the coin and were struck in very low numbers. Generally struck late in the year and intended to be purchased as Christmas gifts, they did not circulate well, with the rarest of all dates, 1934, now fetching several thousand pounds each. The 1927 "wreath" crowns were struck as proofs only.
With its large size, many of the later coins were primarily commemoratives. The 1951 issue was for the Festival of Britain, and was only struck in proof condition. The 1953 crown was issued to celebrate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, while the 1960 issue commemorated the British Exhibition in New York. The 1965 issue carried the image of Winston Churchill on the reverse, the first time a non-monarch or commoner was ever placed on a British coin, and marked his death. According to the Standard Catalogue of coins, 19,640,000 of this coin were minted, a very high number at the time, making them of little value today except as a mark of respect for the national war leader. Production of the Churchill Crown began on 11 October 1965, and stopped in the summer of 1966.
The crown was worth five shillings until decimalisation in February 1971. The last five shilling piece was minted in 1965.
The crown coin was nicknamed the dollar, but is not to be confused with the British trade dollar that circulated in the Orient.
In 2014, a new world record price was achieved for a milled silver crown. The coin was issued as a pattern by engraver Thomas Simon in 1663 and nicknamed the "Reddite Crown". This was presented to Charles II as the new crown piece but was ultimately rejected in favour of the Roettiers Brothers' design. Auctioneers Spink & Son of London sold the coin on 27 March 2014 for £396,000 including commission.
All pre-decimal crowns from 1818 remain legal tender with a face value of 25p.
Decimal crowns
After decimalisation on 15 February 1971, the 25-pence coin was introduced as a replacement for the crown as a commemorative coin. These were legal tender and were made with large mintages.Further issues continue to be minted to the present day, initially with a value of twenty-five pence. From 1990, the face value of new crown coins was raised to five pounds, probably in view of its relatively large size compared with its face value, its production costs, and the Royal Mint's profits on sales of commemorative coins. While this change was understandable, it has brought with it a slight confusion and a popular misbelief that all crowns have a five-pound face value, including the pre-1990 ones.
Changing values
The legal tender value of the crown remained as five shillings from 1544 to 1965. However, for most of this period there was no denominational designation or "face value" mark of value displayed on the coin. From 1927 to 1939, the word "CROWN" appears, and from 1951 to 1960 this was changed to "FIVE SHILLINGS". Coins minted since 1818 remain legal tender with a face value of 25 pence.Although all "normal" issues since 1951 have been composed of cupro-nickel, special proof versions have been produced for sale to collectors, and as gift items, in silver, gold, and occasionally platinum.
The fact that gold £5 crowns are now produced means that there are two different strains of five pound gold coins, namely crowns and what are now termed "quintuple sovereigns" for want of a more concise term.
Numismatically, the term "crown-sized" is used generically to describe large silver or cupro-nickel coins of about 40 mm in diameter. Most Commonwealth countries still issue crown-sized coins for sale to collectors.
New Zealand's original fifty-cent pieces, and Australia's previously round but now dodecagonal fifty-cent piece, although valued at five shillings in predecimal accounting, are all smaller than the standard silver crown pieces issued by those countries. They were in fact similarly sized to the predecimal half crown.
Composition
For silver crowns, the grade of silver adhered to the long-standing standard – the Sterling Silver standard of 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper. This was a harder-wearing alloy, yet it was still a rather high grade of silver. It went some way towards discouraging the practice of "clipping", though this practice was further discouraged and largely eliminated with the introduction of the milled edge seen on coins today.In a debasement process which took effect in 1920, the silver content of all British coins was reduced from 92.5% to 50%, with a portion of the remainder consisting of manganese, which caused the coins to tarnish to a very dark colour after they had been in circulation for a significant period. Silver was eliminated altogether in 1947, with the move to a composition of cupro-nickel – except for proof issues, which returned to the pre-1920 92.5% silver composition.
Since the Great Recoinage of 1816, a crown has, as a general rule, had a diameter of, and weighed 28.276 grams.
Modern mintages
- The specifications for composition refer to the standard circulation versions. Proof versions continue to be minted in Sterling silver
Gallery