Silver Crowns

A Crown has a denomination value of Five Shillings, they first appeared in 1526 and was a gold coin. It wasn't until 1551 that the Silver Crown was minted, it was also the first British coin to bear the date in Arabic numerals. The Gold Crown continued to be minted alongside the silver crown both intermittently over the years but the gold version finally ended in 1662.

Crowns were a popular coin, mainly because of it size, but the because of the larger size the monarchs portrait could be in more detail, like with a lot of coins during the 16th to 18th century, the crown was not produced every year, and none at all for the period 1752 to 1818 because there was a shortage of silver in the UK, 1797 saw the Spanish 8 coin being used unofficially, so the government took the decision to stamp the coins with a picture of George III, but these were only worth a 3d less than a crown at 4/9d. When the crown was minted again in 1818, it still was very irregular in the years it was minted.

After the death of Queen Victoria the crown was only produced for collector or commemorative events. Prior to the UK monetary system changing to decimal, the reign of Elizabeth II issued three commemorative crowns for the years 1953 (Coronation), 1960 (British Trade Fair), 1965 (Churchill), after decimalisation four crowns were produced in the years 1972 (Silver Wedding), 1977 (Jubilee Year), 1980 (Queen's Mother 80th birthday) and 1981 (Royal Wedding).

Since 1951 the regular crowns were made from cupro-nickel, though special proof versions were produced for sale to collectors, and as gift items, in silver, gold.

With the cost of manufacturing such a large coin costing more than the coin was actually worth (25pence), it was decided to issue all future crowns with as a Five Pound Coin, though some still call these crowns technically they should be known as crown sized coins.

	Silver Half Crowns Half Crowns minted between 1920 and 1947 contained 0.2273 oz of silver while those pre 1920 contained 0.4205 oz of silver and so the bullion value of half crowns maybe worth more than a coin as a collectors item, that is why some badly worn coins are still valuable.