100 Years of History

This two-coin Sovereign set marks the centenary of the end of the First World War, combining one of the last circulating Sovereigns struck by The Royal Mint dated 1918 with a 2018 bullion Sovereign.

Far from the front line, the shockwaves of the First World War ripped through British society. As the government encouraged people to invest their gold in the war effort, the viability of circulating gold coins was increasingly under threat. The Sovereign would not be spared. Part of economic life since its revival in 1816, by 1918 the ‘chief coin of the world’ was no longer issued, a victim of the demands of total war. As a shattered country took stock, life in Britain would never quite be the same again.