Signature Coins & Bullion

The earliest attempt at a gold standard can be traced back 2500 years to King Croesus of Lydia in ancient Greece, (Modern day Turkey). At the time, silver was more valued than gold and the main metal for transporting and storing wealth was Electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver. It was King Croesus that first separated the two, and began minting gold coins of a fixed standard and purity.

In modern times, the gold standard as most people think of it began in 1696. Prior to then it was common practice to “clip” or “shave” gold and silver from coins. This leads to a general debasement of coins as weight and thus values were reduced. Explained by the economic principal called Gresham’s law, bad money drives out good money. That is, people spend the clipped coins, keeping hold of the full weight items.

Newly appointed master of the Royal Mint, Sir Isaac Newton instituted the Great Recoinage. He calculated that sixteen ounces of silver would henceforth be equal to one ounce of gold. Over the following years all coin were withdrawn into the Royal Mint, melted down and struck again to the correct weighs and purity using a new minting technique called “Milling”. Typical minting techniques involved “hammering” a standard disk of metal to create an irregular shaped coin. Because milled coins are similar to what we use today, any clipping or shaving could easily be spotted.