The Royal Mint is nearly the oldest mint in the world, as its founding in 886 AD makes it 22 years younger than the Monnaie de Paris in France. With all that experience, the Royal Mint confidently produces some of the finest silver coins in the world. It also has several different coin series to explore and collect.
The Britannia series is the most prominent coin series produced by the Royal Mint. These trademark coins first debuted in 1997 and bore a unique .958 purity – a purity that came to be known as “Britannia silver.”
However, all Britannias minted after 2012 have been .999 fine. The move came as the Royal Mint sought to compete with other similar coins and to address growing demand for higher-purity coins. Here are some of the relevant details about the Britannia:
The Queen’s Beasts coin series is one of two major Royal Mint products that pay tribute to elements of the British monarchy. In this case, the Queen’s Beasts coin series is a reference to ten heraldic beasts sculpted for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953.
The ten beasts stood six feet tall and represented the new Queen’s genealogy. Each beast paid homage to the different royal bloodlines that combined and affirmed her ascendance to the British throne.
There are ten of these coins in the series. The Royal Mint produced them between 2016 and 2021, with most years featuring two releases.
Each coin is minted .9999 fine, likely in response to other highest-purity coins like the Canadian Maple Leaf. The Queen’s Beasts also presented a first for the Royal Mint in terms of sizing, as they are standard-issued weighing 2 oz, and are also available in a 10 oz denomination.
The obverse of each release obviously features Queen Elizabeth II. The reverses feature the iconic designs, as follows:
The follow-up series to the Queen’s Beasts, the Tudor Beasts, takes its inspiration from a similar source. However, instead of casting a wide net in capturing the heraldic beasts of the monarchy, it focuses on the iconography of the Tudor dynasty. Specifically, it explores the regal forebears of King Henry VIII and his third wife, Jane Seymour.
The first of the Tudor Beasts debuted in 2022, and the series is still in its production run. Like their predecessors, the Tudor Beasts are minted to be .9999 fine, and there are to be ten of them in the series as well. However, they distinguish themselves from the Queen’s Beasts series in the variety of weights in which they are minted.
Versions of Tudor Beasts are available in 1 oz, 2 oz, 5 oz, and 10 oz versions. In fact, if you like, there are even some of them that bear a full kilo of .9999 silver.
Here are the Tudor Beasts that have been released at this time:
As the last of the coins are released in 2026, we will update this list accordingly.
The two-coin series listed above are, by no means, the only available British silver coins. The Royal Mint likely has one of the greatest selections of coin series of any sovereign mint, and there really is something for everybody. Here are the other major coin series produced by the Royal Mint:
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