1917 London Sovereign

Specifications

Denomination: Sovereign (£1)
Designer: Bertram MacKennal (obverse); Benedetto Pistrucci (reverse)
Years of issue: 1917
Composition: 91.67% Gold, 8.33% Copper
Weight: 7.9881 g
Diameter: 22.05 mm
KM: 820
Mintage: 1014999
Key mintages: 1,014,999 (NGC); 1,014,714 annual figure (Britannia Coin Company). London mint — no mintmark.

Melt value: $1,022.95gold $4,345.00/ozt, copper $0.44/ozt · prices as of Sep 16, 2026

AI-generated illustration — not a photograph of a genuine coin.

1,014,999 struck at London — the lowest calendar-year mintage of any circulating George V London sovereign, and the last London sovereign year of WWI (NGC; Britannia Coin Company).

History

The London branch of the Royal Mint struck 1,014,999 full sovereigns in 1917 (NGC) — the lowest calendar-year mintage for a circulating London sovereign of George V’s reign (Britannia Coin Company; NGC, accessed 2026-09-16).
1917 was the last year of sovereign manufacture at the London Mint until the one-off 1925 issue, halted by the financial strain of World War I (Chards, accessed 2026-09-16).
Nearly the entire 1917 issue was held as Bank of England gold reserves, then exported to the United States in lieu of war-debt payments and very likely melted down in the 1930s — surviving examples are genuinely scarce (Britannia Coin Company; Gerrards Bullion, accessed 2026-09-16).
Obverse: Bertram MacKennal’s bare-head portrait of George V facing left, legend ‘GEORGIVS V D.G.BRITT: OMN: REX F.D.IND:IMP:’; reverse: Benedetto Pistrucci’s St George and the dragon, date below (NGC; BullionByPost, accessed 2026-09-16).
London sovereigns carry no mintmark — the tiny letters S, M, P, C, I and SA above the date denote the Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Ottawa, Bombay and Pretoria branch mints (Britannia Coin Company, accessed 2026-09-16).

Key dates and varieties

CORRECTION to the task brief: Australia DID strike 1917 circulation sovereigns — 1917-S (Sydney), 1917-M (Melbourne) and 1917-P (Perth) business strikes are all catalogued (Coins and Australia; PCGS ValueView lists 1917-S), and Ottawa struck the 1917-C (58,845, NGC). The ‘proofs/patterns only’ claim for Australia 1917 is incorrect.
This entry is the London issue only: no mintmark above the date (BullionByPost; Britannia Coin Company, accessed 2026-09-16).
1917 vs 1916 London: 1,014,999 vs 1,554,000 — the two scarcest George V London sovereign dates, with 1917 the lower (NGC, accessed 2026-09-16).
The 1917 London sovereign is a known target of 1970s high-quality forgeries — a scarce/rare date that appears in that counterfeit series (Chards, accessed 2026-09-16).

Specifications

composition
designers
diameter
edge
mint
weight

Collector notes

Key genuine marker: no mintmark above the date on the reverse = London. A ‘1917’ showing S, M, P, C or I is a branch-mint issue, not this coin (BullionByPost; Britannia Coin Company, accessed 2026-09-16).
Physical check: 7.98–7.99 g at 22ct; the 1970s forgeries of this date are described as excellent workmanship that fooled experienced dealers — buy graded/authenticated examples (Chards, accessed 2026-09-16).
Value factors: catalogues around £2,750 in EF (Chards); NGC guide to $5,250 at MS64. The floor is gold melt on 0.2355 oz AGW, so the numismatic premium dominates (Chards; NGC, accessed 2026-09-16).