Talk:Sovereign (British coin)

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I do not think it appropriate the The London Mint Office are included in the (external) links. They are, as I/we have pointed out on our websites, a company with a misleading name, which uses dubious and misleading titles, claims and statements in its adverts, websites, and other published material. We believe its inclusion here lends it a degree of expertise or respectability which is does not deserve. For example : £139 Gold Sovereign 2009 Proof Gold Sovereign £160 saving, Free Postage! When we post pages strongly criticising competitors, we are naturally highly aware of the need for caution, fairness and accuracy. Lawrence Chard (talk) 20:37, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree, and I went ahead and removed that link. --Joffeloff (talk) 12:33, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

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I think that most of the articles on coins in wikipedia need work in terms of fitting them into a meaningful hierarchy instead of unconnected articles. A tree structure thats starts at 'coin' and then braches into 'ancient and midieval' and 'modern'. From there 'modern' can be broken up into countries, while 'ancient and medieval' can be broken up into ruling authorites and such (Greek, Roman, Parthian, Celtic etc.) (u/s) Maximus Rex 07:58, 13 July 2003 (UTC)

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I have no problem with that so long as a user who types in krugerrand still gets to the right place. Remember this is free and user driven! Although 21:17, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Value

Could we be given some idea of the value of a sovereign? Since an indication is given that they are worth more than the raw value of the gold, what is their actual value? In pounds sterling (u/s) 57.66.51.165 13:51, 12 January 2006

• Nominally it has a face value of one pound, although its bullion value is clearly more than that. It contains aproximately 1/4 of a troy ounce of gold, sojust look up the most current value of gold and mutiply it by .25 and there's its bullion value. Its numismatic value depends on condition and rarity of the sepcific year, but it will always be worth at least its bullion value. 75.70.123.215 (talk) 07:15, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

This article needs some more clarification on this topic, because 'Nominally it has a face value of one pound' doesn't make a lick of sense to me if the gold content has a higher value. In what context is that relevant? Walkersam (talk) 22:26, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

See the discussion of tax treatment at the end of the article.--Wehwalt (talk) 07:24, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

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How is it that we're calling this "impressive size" when it's 7/8ths of an inch in diameter, and maybe 1/32 of an inch thick? Does anyone have background for the "why it's called a Sovereign" statements? (u/s) Dagfinn Ronaldsen 18:52, 25 April 2006

The 1489 original measured about 43 mms in diameter (1.8 inches) which was, and still is, impressive.

Why it's called a Sovereign is explained on my/our Gold Sovereigns website. Although I have previous contributed towards this Wikipedia (Sovereign) page, and others, I have tried to avoid appearing to spam or advertise, and keep my signatures and links to a minimum. If others see fit to create links to our sites, we naturally have no objections. Lawrence Chard (talk) 20:37, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:SVH06 2.jpg

Image:SVH06 2.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 07:17, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Production summary

Surely sovereigns are currently (and have been for some time) minted at the Royal Mint works in Wales, not London? Methinks this section needs changing. David (talk) 23:53, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Value Of British Gold Sovereign 1902

I have two British Gold Sovereigns with me of years 1902 and 1903. Could you please give approximate value of these sovereigns?? Thanks and best regards.

Iftikhar-ur-Rehman —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iftigrandpa (talk • contribs) 07:27, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Please translate all figures into the SI-system

At several places in this article the subunit of the SI-system for weight, grams are presented (whithin parantheses). But at the end of the article only UK-units are presented. Could someone please translate all units into SI-standard. (ie for weight kg or the subunit gram; 1 kg = 1000 g.) Outside the UK the UK-units often "is like reading chineese". This would be appriciated by all english reading people of the planet, and need only to (stand inside parantheses). But not only in this article, but evrywhere in the Brittish Wikipedia, and for all units (kilometer, meter or millimeter for length, km/h or knots for speed, liter or milliliter for volume. ) I do not' want to take away the UK-units only have them translated as standard. No one in France, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain, Germany etc do have a clue what for instence a grain, ounce, yard, stone or a gallon really is, UK-miles (and feet among pilots) are a bit more common known but often confused whith nautical mile or distance minutes (wich are the same and = 1852 meters, used at sea and in air). Brittons ! Please do not take offence by this wishing, we (or at least I) only want to understand, and besides the SI-system is made logical by their prefixes "kilo" is always 1000 of the following unit. 1 kilometer = 1000 meter, 1 kilogram = 1000 grams. While "milli" is the opposite. 1 millimeter = 0.001 meter, 1 milligram = 0,001 gram. It's far more easy to learn. And the rest of the world have adapted the english language as the global language (and global longitudes and latitudes with zero-meridian through Greenwich observatory). So London will remain center of the world anyway. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.249.36.175 (talk) 23:54, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Page name

Is there any good reason why this page is called Sovereign (British coin) rather than just Sovereign (coin)? The latter would seem to be more in keeping with the way page names are usually disambiguated. Roy Badami (talk) 10:11, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

See Sovereign (English coin). James500 (talk) 16:05, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Melting down sovereigns

if a gold sovereign is legal tender, and it is illegal to deface british coins. are jewellers who buy up these coins to melt them down, breaking the law? if this practice is illegal, and it appears to be widespead, should something be put in this article about it?

193.133.92.229 (talk) 10:12, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Request for photo

Although there are a few pictures of sovereigns on the page, the sovereign is a coin currently in production--even if only as a bullion coin for investment and collection--and we should have a photo of the current design. A usable image is therefore what's called for. Lockesdonkey (talk) 02:56, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Legal tender?

Is the sovereign still legal tender in the UK? I assume so, but the article doesn't state that directly anywhere. If it is legal tender, would anyone be opposed to me adding a sentence to the end of the last paragraph of the lead that read something like, "Though the sovereign is no longer in widespread use in circulation, it is still legal tender in the United Kingdom."? AmericanLemming (talk) 12:16, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

It is legal tender. It is so stated in the final section of the article. I have no objection to your addition, though I would strike the word "widespread". I'm not aware of it being used as a circulating coin anywhere.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:31, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Dubious - coin weight

The article claims:

Formal instruction to the Mint came with an indenture dated February 1817, directing the Royal Mint to strike gold coins weighing 7.988 grams, that is to say, the new sovereign.

The number 7.988 grams is an indirect quotation. We are saying that the 1817 indenture said that it should be 7.988 grams - as opposed to a number in grains or troy ounces.

In 1817, less than two years after the defeat of Napoleon, it seems distinctly unlikely that the Royal Mint was instructed to strike gold coins using any weight in grams. It seems far more likely that the mint was instructed to strike gold coins containing 20 shillings' worth of gold at the existing standard of 44.5 guineas (£46/14/6) to the troy pound. If you do the sum, this works out as precisely 160/623 troy ounces for the sovereign.

Now, the actual weights concerned are basically the same (with too many decimal places the convert template reports 7.98805183 grams), so if we don't know exactly what the indenture said we can reword to avoid the issue. But that being said, if there is a formal definition, WP:UNITS says we should use it as primary. Kahastok talk 22:13, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

I don't think it says that grams were used, I think both the source (that I've looked at afresh) and what was written avoid that. But for clarity, I've dropped a footnote approximating the original language and giving a link in case something further is desired. I've removed the dubious tag.--Wehwalt (talk) 07:01, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Sovereign ring

On the offchance that anyone reads this while its on the main page we've been looking for a pic for the Sovereign ring for years.©Geni (talk) 15:00, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I would suggest messaging someone who is selling one on eBay and asking them to release the photographic rights via OTRS.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:10, 17 November 2020 (UTC)