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Message:: [QUOTE="Sovereign, post: 26003133, member: 19847"]Thank you for your comments, the articles will follow the sovereign from 1817 to date, but with a little bit of a twist as I will be looking at what was happening at the Royal Mint at the time these coins were struck. There are many stories along the way, such as William Wyon forced to work from his house because Pistrucci boarded up the passage way and stole his office. Primarily the articles look at the processes employed at the Mint at the time a sovereign was struck. What this has actually achieved is to answer some questions, raise yet more questions, and show some current thinking to be wrong which I am sure will cause some controversy. Currently I am researching how dies were manufactured in the early Victorian era, they contain a lot of errors and the question is how did they get on to the coins. On the face of it, the engraver just picks up the wrong letter punch or punches one in the wrong place so re-punches over the top of it. Doubling is simply put down to dual hubbing in most publications today. These things raise questions if you put them under scrutiny, and that is what I am currently doing. I was hoping by looking at the US Mint for the same period it would give clues into the processes used at the time. One big question is when did all elements of the design including the legends first appear on the master die (matrix) and not solely on the working die?[/QUOTE]