Sovereign Case

For centuries, up to the beginning of the First World War, people in Britain, particularly the wealthiest classes, would have been familiar with handling gold coins. While leather purses would have been used to carry such valuable items there would also have been the option of using a case especially made for gold sovereigns and half-sovereigns. Such cases were popular in the nineteenth century and with rings for suspension on watch-chains they could be conveniently carried in the fob of a waistcoat.

Items such as coin cases and pocket weighing scales are present in the Mint Museum because they reveal something about what it would have been like to live with and to use a circulating gold coinage. People would have wanted a means of keeping their sovereigns safe from falling out of their pockets and they would have wanted to weigh the gold coins they received to ensure they were of an acceptable weight.

With the advent of the First World War, and the financial and political disruption that came in its wake, Britain found it impossible to sustain a circulating gold coinage, and so sovereigns and their cases disappeared from daily use.