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WHILE CENTRAL BANKS debate the merits of a purely electronic, cashless society, a near-800 year old ceremony to test Britain’s coinage is taking place in a quiet corner of London.
It might sound like something out of Harry Potter, but the Trial of the Pyx is real and has been conducted in London yearly since the late 13th century.
The ceremony, conducted in Goldsmiths’ Hall, puts the Royal Mint on trial. Around 96,000 coins are scrutinised over a four month period.
The coins are “assayed” or tested for imperfections and impurities in the metals used to make them, to confirm their value.
A sample of all the coins made by the Royal Mint are tried in this way – from a £1,000 pound commemorative coin made from a kilo of solid gold, down to the lowly 20p piece.
The opening of this year’s trial on 2 February was full of pomp and circumstance. It’s carried out by the Queen’s Remembrancer, a judge, who swears in the 16-strong jury who have the job of counting the coins sent for testing by the Royal Mint.
While it’s mostly ceremonial, the Trial of the Pyx has an important message – merchants, not the state or the monarchy, must have power over the country’s currency. To allow the state to have power over the currency risks eroding its credibility.
Permission for the City of London to test the coins produced by the Royal Mint was granted by the Crown in the 13th century. Before that, the reigning monarch had a monopoly on producing and testing Britain’s coinage and would periodically alter the standards for the coins to finance wars.
“There was the inherent danger of inflation and currency corruption,” the Queen’s Remembrancer, Barbara Fontaine, said in her speech to open proceedings. The Trial was ”a key stage of development of the international trust in our coinage”.
Here’s how it all looks:
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Can you imagine if our bunch of politicians were doing the ‘checking’ – They’d hardly be able to stand up & walk out, with the weight of coins in their pockets…
I know a few lads who could give ya the purity of metal just by looking at it in a skip. No need for all that carry on.
Ah but ya gotta love pomp and ceremony and they excel at it across the water. Jokes aside, I love that mad traditions like this still exist
And we have people walking up a mountain – near Westport – every year in their bare feet….
And people going from Pub to pub trying to find the one that’s open on good Friday
Suppose it’s few days out and a chance to get dressed up. Meet up with friends get pissed, that sort of stuff.
At least their currency is not in the toilet, unlike our adopted one!
Great but meaningless sound bite!
Numismatics is a great hobby, full of history.
Jolly Good. RAW RAW
Why mock another country’s traditions?
Here, we don’t drink on Good Fridays….
@Seb Because some traditions (just like our no pubs on good Friday one) deserve to be mocked.
Sev old boy, have a spiffingly good day
Aw sure, an have one yorsef…
I certainly drink on Good Friday…. :D
Game of tiddlywinks for pompous gits full of their own self importance and paid for by the tax payer by the sounds of it.
No not even close
There’s a £5 coin?
That’s what I was thinking. There are a few weird coin denominations like the $1 coin but I’ve at least seen them before. I’ve never even heard of a £5 coin.
Got a $2 note
Oh they definitely do exist. I remember seeing one a few years ago bearing Princess Diana’s head. They’re rare because they normally tend to be minted as one-off commemorative items – you’d get puzzled looks if you tried spending one on the local off-licence.
It’s a pointless exercise for the coins in circulation, the metals in them is only worth a tiny fraction of their value.
Why the red thumbs my post is factually correct!
Coin smiths used to cut slithers off the silver coins to make extra coins for themselves, this then was found out and then any coin smith doing this then was sentenced to having his balls cut off. There has been no need to do this since they stopped using silver. Even the coppers now are dross iron?
That’s why the put reeding on the edges. The vertical groves on coins edge would show if someone took a small slice.
Maybe so but I bet you would not give yours away
Really interesting, not sure the merit of the process now considering that nobody uses commodity money. Governments downgrade currency all the time, it doesn’t really matter though. Gold is nowhere near €55,000. I wish it was, gold miners are bleeding heavily at current prices which means no jobs for us mining geos. I’ve never seen a £5 coin before?
So an excuse to pay the right people loads of money to do nothing just like a guango?
At least they won’t be cutting anyones balls off, if the coins are smaller than they should be lol.
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