The day the brand new UK Gold Proof Sovereign is released is one of the most important days in any coin collector’s year.
Quite simply, the Gold Sovereign is without rival as the United Kingdom’s premier Gold Coin. Struck from 22 Carat Gold to the exact same specification since 1817, it epitomises all that is British.
Most importantly for the thousands of Sovereign collectors, it’s a coin that sells out.
In fact, in recent years, the Sovereign has become the UK’s sell-out king. And last year’s 2022 Platinum Jubilee Sovereign really surpassed any other release.
In fact, in the last 5 years alone, we’ve seen 56,990 Sovereigns sold, with sell-outs in a matter of hours in some cases.
What has driven this frenzied demand for Britain’s most iconic gold coin?
It started in 2015 with the second Proof Sovereign released for that year. It featured the fifth definitive portrait of Her Majesty on a Sovereign for the first time and 7,000 coins sold out in a short space of time.
That was quickly followed by the special 2016 Sovereign, which featured a one-year-only portrait of the Queen for her 90th birthday. 7,500 Sovereigns were issued and 7,500 Sovereigns sold out.
The most significant release came for 2017 though when The Royal Mint made the decision to revisit the original design of the modern Sovereign issued in 1817.
To celebrate the bicentenary they faithfully reproduced Benedetto Pistrucci’s masterpiece and 10,500 Proof Sovereigns sold out within 30 days.
The bicentenary of the modern Sovereign brought in a large pool of new collectors, leading to further quick sell-outs for the 2018 and 2019 Sovereigns.
And then we saw the 2022 Platinum Jubilee Sovereign, which broke records everywhere.
The record-breaking Platinum Jubilee Sovereign.
The UK 2022 Platinum Jubilee Sovereign broke every record seen before it. 10,500 were made available on launch day. Within 24 hours they were completely sold out. Well actually, the entire Sovereign range sold out on that day.
This coin is now in stronger demand than ever, it’s broken records and collectors around the world are still desperately tying to source it on the secondary markets.
And there’s two reasons for this
- A one year only design change – Sovereigns with design changes are few and far between. These rare deviations from the classic St George and the Dragon reverses are exactly the kind of pieces that collector’s strve to have in their collections.
- The power of the Platinum Jubilee – Simply put, the Platinum Jubilee is the must-have collecting theme of the year. Every Royal Mint coin released to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee has completely sold out, and this pattern has rippled across the world. Thousands of coins marking this once in a lifetime event have sold out completely.
If you’re interested…
Whilst the UK Proof Sovereign is completely unavailable, we have a small number of UK 2022 DateStampTM Sovereigns available, postmarked with the Platinum Jubilee date.
